I'm sure this must be an easy one, I haven't used access for years and I've forgot how to do everything.

I'm designing a query based on a linked table which belongs to someone else. Unfortunately they appear to have stored a cost value (eg. 12030.30) as text.

I need to group the table records together and sum the cost value but I can't because its a text data type. Can anyone help me convert the data type within the query so that I can sum the costs, I've tried to build the expression using the cdbl() function but got stuck when it asked me for a parameter.....

Would appreciate the help :)

Thanks

Lloyd

p.s using Access 97....

Usually, when it is asking for a parameter, you spelled something wrong OR there is an ambiguity. For a single-table query, the latter is not really possible, but for a multi-table (JOIN) query, the field name might need to be qualifed by its table name.

If the query is spelling the field name correctly and it is text format, a CDbl([xxx]) of that field name (properly bracketed) should work.