Is there a way to have Access ask which field to search values from?

[Rwathen10]

I have been putting off this question for 2 weeks now, but I have not been able to figure it out on my own.

Is there a way to have Access ask me (like a parameter query), which field to get values from?

I have Expense Reports for different months from Cognos that look like this:

ExpenseCodes	Measurement	Jan, 2015	Feb, 2015	Mar, 2015
00000-BUDGETED SAVINGS	Month Var	8	898	1032
00000-BUDGETED SAVINGS	YTD Actual	75	965	1099
00000-BUDGETED SAVINGS	YTD Rev Bud	142	1032	1166
00000-BUDGETED SAVINGS	YTD Var	209	1099	1233
00000-BUDGETED SAVINGS	YTD Var%	276	1166	1300
00001-PROFESSIONAL	Month Var	343	1233	1367
00001-PROFESSIONAL	YTD Actual	410	1300	1434
00001-PROFESSIONAL	YTD Rev Bud	477	1367	890
00001-PROFESSIONAL	YTD Var	544	1434	890

For example, How can I have Access ask me which of the three columns (Jan, 2015, Feb, 2015 or Mar, 2015) to give me the "YTD Var" value of "00000-Budgeted Savings"? As I replace this data throughout the month, I want cognos to ask me what Field/Month I am working from so that I don’t have to update my query to get data from the new column? Also, I may forget to update it one month, so I want something that asks me what field.

Thanks very much in advanced.

[JoeM]

What you actually have here is a design issue, your table is not normalized.
Instead of having multiple fields (columns) for each month, you should have a separate record for each month. So each records would have a month field and an amount field.

Then, to query what you want, it is just a matter of selecting/entering the appropriate criteria in the month field.

Here is a good article which talks about data normalization: https://support.office.com/en-us/art...rs=en-US&ad=US

Otherwise, if you don't want to manually update your query every time, you might need to use VBA to dynamically build the SQL code of the query you wish to return (so that would involve both VBA and SQL).