something that will give me totals for certain fields.

Open the query in design view and click on the icon that looks like a Greek
"E" (Epsilon) and it will change your query to a totals query.  Change the
Group By to Sum for those fields you want to total.

In sample NorthWind mdb,
a simple SELECT query might be:

SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Orders.EmployeeID
FROM Orders
ORDER BY
Orders.ShipCountry;

in query designer, the grid will look like:

Field:    ShipCountry    EmployeeID
Table:   Orders            Orders
Sort:     Ascending
Show:  <checked>      <checked>
Criteria:
or:

I'm sorry to complicate things right off the bat,
but because EmployeeID is a (bad) lookup field,
right-mouse click on the column for
EmployeeID and choose Properties. Under
Lookup tab, make sure Display Control is set
for "TextBox" for our purposes so we will see actual
EmployeeId numbers, not "looked-up" employee names.
Sorry...

Now, if you look at the query results you will get
as many records as there are records in table Orders
where some combinations of Country/Emp
are repeated.

More meaningful results might be if we were to
show only the distinct combinations (or groups).
We could do this by adding DISTINCT to the
query, or we could change the query to a totals
query as Karl has said by clicking on the sigma icon.

In our grid we now get a "Total" row

Field:    ShipCountry    EmployeeID
Table:   Orders            Orders
Total:    Group By        Group By
Sort:     Ascending
Show:  <checked>      <checked>
Criteria:
or:

Ship Country    Employee
Argentina           1
Argentina           2
Argentina           3
Argentina           4
Argentina           6
Argentina           7
Argentina          8
Argentina          9
Austria              1
Austria              2
Austria              3
Austria              4
Austria              6
Austria              7
Austria              8
Austria              9
Belgium             1
Belgium             2
Belgium             3
Belgium             4
Belgium             5
Belgium             6
Belgium            7
Belgium            9

<etc>

if we look through the results, we see some
interesting things (with difficulty) such as Emp 5
ships to Belgium, but not Argentina nor Austria...

we could easily count number of orders in each
group (this is a totals query after all) by adding
a third column to the grid...actually we could count
the number of records in each group 2 ways:

Field:    EmployeeID    cnt: Count(*)
Table:   Orders
Total:    Count              Expression
Sort:
Show:  <checked>      <checked>
Criteria:
or:

SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Orders.EmployeeID,
Count(Orders.EmployeeID) AS CountOfEmployeeID,
Count(*) AS cnt
FROM Orders
GROUP BY
Orders.ShipCountry,
Orders.EmployeeID
ORDER BY
Orders.ShipCountry;

If you look at the query results, in this case the
counts will be the same, but if an EmployeeID
had been NULL in a record of a group,
Count(*) would have counted that record,
but Count(EmployeeID) would not have counted it.

I'd like to change both to an "Expression" and
give each an alias (and change order of columns):

Field:    TotalOrders: Count(*)    cnt: Count(*)
Table:
Total:    Expression                      Expression
Sort:
Show:  <checked>                      <checked>
Criteria:
or:

SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Count(*) AS TotalOrders,
Orders.EmployeeID,
Count(*) AS cnt
FROM Orders
GROUP BY
Orders.ShipCountry,
Orders.EmployeeID
ORDER BY
Orders.ShipCountry;

To get a result where data "pops out at you,"
lets change to a crosstab query by clicking on
"Query" in top menu and selecting "Crosstab Query."

Our grid will now have one more row:

Field:       ShipCountry     TotalOrders: Count(*)
Table:      Orders
Total:       Group By           Expression
Crosstab:
Sort:         Ascending
Criteria:
or:

Field:      EmployeeID   cnt: Count(*)
Table:
Total:        Group By     Expression
Crosstab:
Sort:
Criteria:
or:

So....I think this is where you are having difficulty,
what selection do you make in the "Crosstab" row?

1) Row Heading
2) Column Heading
3) Value

I guess it starts with what you wish to see, i.e.,
I'd like to see....

------
on the left I'd like to see every distinct country
and how many total orders there were for each
country....

so we have our Row Headings:

Field:       ShipCountry     TotalOrders: Count(*)
Table:      Orders
Total:       Group By           Expression
Crosstab: Row Heading     Row Heading
Sort:         Ascending
Criteria:
or:

------
I'd like Access to create a column on the right
for each Employee...

so we have our Column Heading:

Field:      EmployeeID
Table:
Total:        Group By
Crosstab:  Column Heading
Sort:
Criteria:
or:

------
and under each EmployeeID column,
I'd like to see the number of orders
made by that employee for each country row...

so we have our Value:

Field:   cnt: Count(*)
Table:
Total:      Expression
Crosstab: Value
Sort:
Criteria:
or:

-----

The SQL View of our crosstab query
then would look like:

TRANSFORM Count(*) AS cnt
SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Count(*) AS TotalOrders
FROM Orders
GROUP BY Orders.ShipCountry
ORDER BY Orders.ShipCountry
PIVOT Orders.EmployeeID;

The results might be broken down into "3 field positions":

1) Row Heading
2) Column Heading
3) Value

1) The Row Heading(s) come from
any field(s) in the Group By clause
of your SELECT stmt
(plus any other aggregates in the
SELECT stmt):

"SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Count(*) AS TotalOrders
FROM Orders
GROUP BY orders.ShipCountry"

2) The Column Headings come from
the PIVOT clause at the end of the
query:

"PIVOT orders.EmployeeID;"

3)The Value comes from the crosstab's beginning
TRANSFORM clause:

"TRANSFORM Count(*) AS cnt"

here be an attempt to graphically "break down" results
from the above query:

[---row heading---------------][-col heading=employee id--]
[-GroupBy---][-Expression--][-value=count(*)for each id-]
Ship Country   TotalOrders   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
Argentina          16                 1   1   1   4       1   3   3   2
Austria              40                 5   6   5   6       4   6   5   3
Belgium             19                 1   2   1   6   4   1  2         2
Brazil                83                11  9 10 20   5   8   8   9   3
Canada            30                  5   5   9   3        3   2   2   1
Denmark          18                  4   3   1   3        1   4   2
Finland             22                  2   6   2   3   2   1   1   4   1
France             77                 9  11 13 14   5   9   5   8   3
Germany        122               19 14 19 25   4   9   6  17   9
Ireland              19                 1   3   5   1        3   2   1   3
Italy                  28                 5   7   1   6   1   1   2   3   2
Mexico             28                 6   4   6   4   1        5   2
Norway             6                  2   1   1            2
Poland               7                  2         2   1   1      1
Portugal          13                   2        2   3   2      1   2   1
Spain              23                   3   2   3   7   2      3   2   1
Sweden         37                   5   4   8   3   3   2   2   8   2
Switzerland   18                   2        3   4   1   2   3   1   2
UK                 56                   9   5   8 12   2   5   5   6   4
USA             122                 21  9  21 22  6 14   7 19   3
Venezuela     46                  8   4   8   8   3   2   3   9   1

Note the "gaps." One typical method to get 0 instead
of the "gap" is to use the Null-To-Zero function in your
TRANSFORM clause:

TRANSFORM NZ(Count(*),0) AS cnt

====================

If we knew for sure before hand all the EmployeeID's,
we could create a "totals" query that mimics
the crosstab above using subqueries.

SELECT
Orders.ShipCountry,
Count(*) AS TotalOrders,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=1) As 1,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=2) As 2,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=3) As 3,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=4) As 4,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=5) As 5,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=6) As 6,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=7) As 7,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=8) As 8,

(SELECT Count(*) FROM Orders As O
 WHERE
 O.ShipCountry=Orders.ShipCountry
 AND
 O.EmployeeID=9) As 9,

FROM Orders
GROUP BY orders.ShipCountry;

You might think of the crosstab query
as just a shorthand for creating all those
subqueries where Access does all the work
for you

1) What aggregate should we use for
   each subquery?

Put it in a TRANFORM clause (value)

TRANSFORM Count(*)

2) What fields do we want to match
between main query and subquery?

GROUP BY fields of SELECT clause

3) Within each group, what field (or expression)
will determine a distinct aggregate value
(and what will be the alias for each subquery)?

Put it in the PIVOT clause (column heading)

PIVOT orders.EmployeeID