MS Access - Calculated Expression

In MS Access, an expression is like a formula in Excel. This consists of a number of elements

that can be used alone or in a combination to produce a result. Expressions can include
operators’, constants, functions and identifiers.

Expressions can be used to perform a variety of tasks from retrieving the value of a
control or supplying criteria to a query to creating calculated controls and fields or
defining a group level for report.
In this chapter, we will be focusing on creating a very specific kind of expression called
a calculated expression. We will create several calculated fields that will calculate and
display data that is not stored anywhere within the database itself but calculated from
separate fields that are stored.
We now have a new Access database that contains more data to calculate.

Example
Let us try an example to understand this. We will be retrieving some information from a variety
of tables — tblCustomers, tblOrders, tblOrdersDetails and tblBooks and reviewing a variety
of fields.

Let us now run the query and you will see the following results.
We want a very simple calculation for a subtotal which will take the quantity of the books
ordered and multiply that by the retail price of the book. It is a good idea to begin every
expression or any expression with a name to call that field. Let us call this one subtotal.

The full expression (Subtotal: [tblOrdersDetails]![QTY]*[tblBooks]![RetailPrice]) includes

the table name, first tblOrdersDetails inside square brackets because that is where our quantity
field lives. Now an exclamation is telling Access to look inside that table for a field QTY and
multiply that by the retail price field in tblBooks.
Let us try to run your query and you will see at end the subtotal field.
Let us say we want to calculate our sales tax. In the query grid we will do in the exact same way
we did before and this time we will call the field simply Tax and Let us multiply Subtotal by nine
percent tax rate.

Let us run your query again and you will see the new Tax field in the end.