Description of the expressions to count yes, no, and other responses in Access

  • Article
  • Applies to:
    Access 2007, Access 2003, Access 2002, Access 2000

Moderate: Requires basic macro, coding, and interoperability skills.

This article applies to a Microsoft Access database (.mdb) file or to a Microsoft Access database (.accdb) file.

Summary

This article lists sample expressions that you can use to count the occurrences of Yes, No, or Null in a field with a Yes/No data type.

More information

You can use the following expressions in a report footer to count the occurrences of Yes, No, or Null in a field named YesNoField with a data type of Yes/No:

Expression Sums What
=Sum(IIF([YesNoField],1,0)) Yes
=Sum(IIF([YesNoField],0,1)) No
=Sum(IIF(Not[YesNoField],1,0)) No
=Sum(IIF(IsNull[YesNoField],1,0)) Null

You can also create a related expression to count a specific value in a field. For example, the following sample expression counts all occurrences of the value 3 in a field called MyField.

=Sum(IIF([MyField]=3,1,0))

Example Using Sample Database Northwind

  1. Open the sample database Northwind in Access.

  2. Use the Report Wizard to create a report based on the Products table.

  3. Select CategoryID and UnitPrice as the fields for the report.

  4. Group on CategoryID.

  5. In the design view of the report, click Sorting and Grouping on the View menu, and make sure that the GroupFooter property for CategoryID is set to Yes.

    Note In Access 2007, in the design view of the report, on the Design tab, click Group & Sort in the Grouping & Totals group, and make sure that the with a footer section property for CategoryID is selected.

  6. Add an unbound text box in the CategoryID footer section with the ControlSource property for the text box set to the following expression:

    =Sum(IIF([Discontinued],1,0))

  7. Add a second unbound text box with the ControlSource property for the text box set to the following expression:

    =Sum(IIF([Discontinued],0,1))

  8. On the File menu, click Print Preview.

    In Access 2007, click Microsoft Office Button, point to Print, and then click Print Preview.

    Notice that the first expression will count the number of products within each category that have the Discontinued field set to Yes. The second expression will count the number of products within each category that have the Discontinued field set to No.