How does "not equal" translate into Access Language

May 17, 2006 9:08 AM

In Access (and Excel as well I would imagine) what is the symbol for "Not Equals"? I would imagine since = is equals there must be a symbol for everything excluding said parameter

I am in the process of teaching myself MS Access. I have made our excel based computer inventory into a Access database, and one of the fields is IP Address. The IP address field is either a number, or the word "storage" if its a PC that is no longer on our network.
I want to make a Query that only lists PCs with active IP addresses, and excludes all of the "Storage" PCs. I think I can do this in the criteria field in the design view of my query, but the example it gives me if I do a shift-F1 on the Criteria field is ="denmark".
So, how do I tell it not="denmark"?

posted by JonnyRotten to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

Best answer: I am not 100% sure and not on a windows machine right now... but you want either

<>
(i think this is the microsofty way)

or

!=
(which is what the rest of the world use).
posted by handee at 9:10 AM on May 17, 2006

Best answer: I believe the symbol is "<>"

So, in the Criteria field you would type...

<>"denmark"

Hope this helps!
posted by utsutsu at 9:10 AM on May 17, 2006

Response by poster: Oh, and I tried " =NOT "Storage" " but when I exit design mode and save it, and reenter it turns into this:
Not ([ComputerInventory2].[IP #])="STORAGE"
and then my Query, when ran, brings up nothing at all instead of everything.
posted by JonnyRotten at 9:10 AM on May 17, 2006

Best answer: In Excel (don't know about Access), it's <>

F9<>"Denmark"
posted by fuzzbean at 9:10 AM on May 17, 2006

Response by poster: Best answers all around!
Why in the name of all thats holy is that information so obscure? I have searched in vain before for that in excel as well.

Thanks guys! that was superfast!
posted by JonnyRotten at 9:13 AM on May 17, 2006

Response by poster: Is there a site that perhaps lists useful things like this? Because even now searching the help file for <> yields nothing at all.
posted by JonnyRotten at 9:15 AM on May 17, 2006

Here's a decent Access repository.
posted by COBRA! at 9:18 AM on May 17, 2006

In Access Help, I believe the term you want to search for is "Comparison Operators".
posted by yeoz at 9:29 AM on May 17, 2006

MS Office help has become increasingly difficult to use effectively over the past years . . .

Try doing a search in the help menu for "operators" (rather than "Comparison Operators); help *should* provide links to several useful operators that go beyond mere comparison (e.g., matching patterns (the "like" operator), range matching (the "between . . . and . . ." operator), matching lists (the "in" operator), matching or avoiding nulls ("is null" and "is not null" operators).
posted by treepour at 11:27 AM on May 17, 2006

The expression builder (the magic wand icon on the query design toolbar) provides a half-way decent GUI that has buttons for the common operators along with an interface to browse through all the built-in functions. This still requires you to know what the function you're looking for is called, but it's a good place to start.

Once you've selected a function from this list you can jump straight to the function's help page, bypassing the awful new Office help interface.
posted by cnelson at 12:54 PM on May 17, 2006

Does it actually mean "neither smaller than or bigger than", or, wait that would actually mean "equals", wouldn't it?

Does it mean "both smaller than and bigger than"?

I guess my question is, does it use those symbols for some logical reason, or is it just a little diamond shape?

And where can you get a "I <3 <>" t-shirt?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:35 PM on May 17, 2006

I would think that it means either less, or greater than.
posted by Megafly at 2:46 PM on May 17, 2006

Keep in mind, too, that for a range, you can set the criteria as

Not in (x,y,z) (single quotes around text variables)

which is entirely different than what you are asking but semi-related so I thought I would toss it in here for anyone who searches this in the future.
posted by mic stand at 5:15 PM on May 17, 2006

If a value is less than or greater than a second value, they are not equal.
posted by utsutsu at 8:35 PM on May 17, 2006 [1 favorite]