Newbie in need of assistance

[rodcoil]

Folks;



I am good regarding the basic design of a database in MS Access but not so much at manipulating the data contained within. I need to be able to caclulate the difference between rows within specific fields. Once I've accomplished that, I can build a required monthly report. Access is the route that I've chosen due to budget constraints and all that fine stuff.

Here's the info:

Table Name: FileServer

Field Name: cluster_total_capacity

I have a "Date Entered" field which indicates the month in which the data was captured. For this exercise, we'll say February and March.

What I need to do is design a query that will calculate the growth (or shrinkage) of that capacity from February to March.

I've been struggling with this for a few days so I decided to come and ask the experts. I really want to use a single tool for all of this stuff rather than exporting to a pre-configured excel tab, re-importing into Access and generating the reports.

Please help if you can.

Thanks!

[NTC]

To calculate the difference of the same field between rows : you must first bring together just the rows that should be part of the calculation in your 1st query (Q1)

Then make a new query using Q1 and option it to be an Aggregate Query ....the sigma big E icon in the ribbon - you might want to look up that type query...

Possibly this can be done in a single query but doing it in 2 allows you to more easily sanity check your data.