Turning a Value into a positive

[swagger18]

Afternoon,

I work for a company who are rapidly growing in size. We have a quality control system which at the moment is all held in a Excel spreadsheet. As you can imagine the bigger it gets the slower and slower it runs. I am currently converting these spreadsheets into a database structure. I am using SQL Server 2005 as the back end and Microsoft Access 2003 as the front end.

I have ran into a slight problem with one of the formulaes i am trying to convert.

The Formulae as it is in Excel is below:

=+(FieldA-FieldB)*100/FieldC



When i try to convert this into Access as below:

Field4 = + (FieldA - FieldB) * 100 / Field3

The plus symbol is disappearing and it is given me negative values. My first thought was the original formulae that was written is wrong as it has to have a plus value in it to compensate for that, but thought i would post it on here in hope there was away of getting around it.

Cheers in advance

[ajetrumpet]

for a + value, use the ABS()

make sure you understand the directives for order of operations. Yeah, programs follow that too, just like your math teacher taught you.

[swagger18]

Thank you very much for that works a treat.

[ajetrumpet]

solved........

[jzwp11]

I was playing around in Excel and saw no difference in final results using the same formula with the + or without it. Whether the result is positive or negative depends on the variables going into the formula.

In terms of relational databases (Access or SQL Server) you generally would not store the calculated value anyway. You would only store the pertinent values that are used in the calculation. You would do the calculation on the fly in your forms, reports or queries.

[swagger18]

I am doing the calculation in a form and using all the original data it was giving me a neagtive. ajetrumpet solved it for me and is working correctly now.

[jzwp11]

I had started working on my post before ajetrumpet posted his but due to distractions here at work mine came in later. Glad that you the ABS() function worked out for you.

[swagger18]

Ok cheers for your input. Kindly appreciated.