If Control Source is "=[revenue2015]" i get a different answer than if it iss "Revenue2015"

[hokiebill]

Please bear with me and I apologize if this question has been answered already. If it has, please point me to the previous solution. It's not that I can't search, it's just that I am very novice and learning and I am not sure what words to search for with this particular problem.

I have a report that I am updating for 2016. I had to go into a couple queries to update the design to grab data from a new table. That all went perfectly with no problem. At least I think it did.

The problem occured when I updated my report's text box control sources in the report. Here is the example of my problem.

I had a query field updated from Revenue2015 to Revenue2016.
I had a query field updated from Revenue2014 to Revenue2015.

I made the appropriate changes, ran the report, but the numbers were coming out wrong (Keep in mind, I did check the results of the query and saved it). I tracked down the problem to the field not updating from the 2014 data. In other words, the textbox shows "=[revenue2015]-[cost2015]" (note the formula, which necessitates the need for the brackets) but uses the revenue from 2014 (the cost2015 field is acting fine). If I go in and change it to the true control source to just show "Revenue2015" it is fine.

To simplify, if I eliminate as many variables as possible, here is what I'm seeing.

Control Source	Result when Report is run
=[Revenue2015]	$140,000	$140,000 is the revenue i had in 2014, not 2015
Revenue2015	$150,000	This is the correct 2015 revenue

The query I'm running used to use the data from 2014, but no longer does. If I run the query, all the numbers show up correct. So there is no reaosn why I should ever be seeing any results of $140,000. How do I correct this?

[pbaldy]

First thing I would check for is a textbox with the name "Revenue2015". I suspect when you use the "=", you get the value from that textbox, not the field you expect.

[hokiebill]

@pbaldy Holy crap, that was it. Thanks!

[pbaldy]

Happy to help, and welcome to the site!

By the way, normally you wouldn't create a year-specific report. I'd have the user enter criteria (date range, year, whatever). Via a parameter query or other method I'd restrict a report to that date range, year, whatever.