More noobish FMP-to-Access Education Required

[eepok]

Alright, preparing my final report for this database. (yay)

I need to combine some fields and raw text in a report to make a business letter. Easy enough. In Filemaker Pro, one would simply make a "calculation field" and the calculation would look something like this:

Paragraph 1:
"Your book, "&<book name field>&"has been adopted for the course"&<course name field>...

So on and so forth. Then I go to the report view, place the fields, bob's your uncle. I have learned that it's not so straight forward in access. I have tried to make a field and changed its "control" to a formula I created in the expression builder, but it keeps resetting like I didn't do anything.

Anyone willing to point me in the right direction?

 

[KeithG]

you have to start your calculation with an = sign and change the < > to [ ]. Then the above should work

 

[eepok]

Alrighty. I've created a query and an expression in that query that says this:


="Your book, "& [MainOrderTable]![Book Title]&[Main Order Table]![Book Edition]&" ISBN: "&[MainOrderTable]![ISBN]&"has been adopted as required text in my "&[MainOrderTable]![Year]&" "&[MainOrderTable]![Quarter]&" quarter course "&[MainOrderTable]![Course Name]&"."

and outputs this:

Your book, Law In America: A Short History, Modern Library Chronicles (2002) ISBN: 0-375-50635-7 has been adopted as required text in my 2007 Fall quarter course.

Cool! Then, I went to the report to drop in a blank field and change the control source to =[DeskCopyQuery]![Expr1] where "Expr1" is the name of the above expression. I thought all was fine and dandy, but when I go to view the report I get an oddly vague pop-up error box that says "Enter Parameter Value / DeskCopyQuery" and has a place for me to type in some info.

Where shall I go from here?

PS-- thanks for the "=" reminder. /slaps forehead.

 

[KeithG]

You only use the = sign in calculations. Since this is an actual field just select the field name in the dropdown for the control source. Also in the query you can change Expr1 to a differant name to better identify the meaning of your field.

 

[eepok]

Checking in to let you know that it worked and I am thoroughly relieved to have learned such a great deal of Filemaker-to-Access translation.

You guys are all amazing!