Access® 2010 Bible

Chapter 5. Using Operators and Expressions in Access

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding operators in expressions

• Creating complex queries

• Building queries with simple criteria

• Using multiple criteria in a query

• Composing complex query criteria

In previous chapters, you created queries using selected fields from one or more tables. You also sorted the data and set criteria to limit the results of a query. This chapter focuses on using operators and expressions to calculate information, compare values, and display data in a different format — using queries to build examples.

This chapter uses queries to demonstrate the use of operators and functions, but the principles in this chapter's exercises apply anywhere operators and expressions appear in Access.

Note

This chapter uses the Chapter05.accdb database. If you haven't already copied it onto your machine from the CD, you'll need to do so now.

Note

For more on using operators and expressions in forms, reports, and VBA, see Chapters 7, 8, 9, and 13. Using the VBA programming language is discussed in Chapters 10 and 11.

Introducing Operators

Operators let you add numbers, compare values, put text strings together, format data, and perform a wide variety of tasks. You use operators to instruct Access to perform a specific action against one or more operands. The combination of operators and operands is known as an expression.

Note

You'll see the term evaluate a lot in this chapter. When you present Access with a field, expression, variable, and so on, ...