testing for errors

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Anne - 13 Mar 2008 19:23 GMT

woI am comparing amounts in tow fields:Billing Difference:
IIf([SumOfAmt]>[AmountEst],[AmountEst]-[SumOfAmt]), which gave a lots of
empty fields and one field shows 0.00.
My second step is to show only the fields which: is not null or <>0.
This one line showed still up even thought it should not. SumofAmt and
AmountEst are identical. There are no fractions. Why would access think that
these 2 amounts do not equal zero, even though it shows zero?
If I format the difference field as General Number it returns:
-1.45519152283669E-11

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Jerry Whittle - 13 Mar 2008 20:12 GMT

That works out to -0.0000000000145519152283669 which is a very tiny number.
There probably is a very small difference between the two especially as at
least one of them are a calculated field.

It's a Floating Point Math Problem that many computers have. For example in
Access and some other programs 3.1 - 3.11 = -9.99999999999979E-03 which is
not the same as -0.01 as we know it.

You could change your criteria to something like < -0.0000001 OR > 0.0000001

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Jerry Whittle, Microsoft Access MVP
Light. Strong. Cheap. Pick two. Keith Bontrager - Bicycle Builder.

> woI am comparing amounts in tow fields:Billing Difference:
> IIf([SumOfAmt]>[AmountEst],[AmountEst]-[SumOfAmt]), which gave a lots of
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> If I format the difference field as General Number it returns:
> -1.45519152283669E-11

Reply to this Message