Question

I am trying to create an Access query to count all the distinct transactions that don´t contain the characters (V). My data looks like this:

Transaction Number
997
997
998
998
998
999
999(V)

The final result I would like to get is “2” (997 and 998), so I can eliminate the 2 records ( 999 and 999(V) ). I was thinking in counting all rows and then substract all rows that contain (V), but can´t select the (V)´s. This is the query I have and It gives me 0 all the time and not 1:

SELECT     COUNT(*) AS C
FROM         (SELECT DISTINCT [Transaction Number]
                   FROM          [Product History]
                   WHERE      ([Transaction Date] = #7/6/2011#) AND ([Transaction Number] LIKE '*V*')) T

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks

Answer 1

There are a couple of ways to do this. I chose to use LEFT JOIN / IS NULL you could also do NOT IN or NOT EXISTS

the key is joining ph1.[Transaction Number] & '(V)' = ph2.[Transaction Number]

SELECT COUNT ([Transaction Number]) as C
  FROM (SELECT  DISTINCT ph1.[Transaction Number]
        FROM  [Product History] ph1
                            LEFT JOIN [Product History] ph2
                            ON ph1.[Transaction Number] & '(V)' = ph2.[Transaction Number] 
                             WHERE     
                               ph1.[Transaction Date] = #7/6/2011#
                               and ph1.[Transaction Number] NOT LIKE '%V%'
                               and ph2.[Transaction Number] is null) t;

which outputs

C           
----------- 
2