Using Values in Criteria Expressions

Usually Access is pretty good at figuring out what you mean when you type a criteria expression.
However, in certain situations, especially if the criteria expression is long or complex, Access may balk when you try to enter an expression. In nearly all cases it’s because you need some special characters to tell Access about the kind of value in your expression. For example: say you want to display work you have done for Network Consultants, Inc. Because there is a comma and a period in the name, Access would become confused. Typing quotation marks around the name, “Network Consultants, Inc.” helps access identify the entire text you want to query on.

View the Table below to see a chart of the special characters.

Special Characters
This type of data	Looks like this in an expression
Text	“text”
Date	#1/1/00#
Time	#1:00am#
Number	10
Field Name	[field name]

When Access recognizes the type of value in the expression, it will add these characters automatically.
Learn how to use multiple criteria in your query in the next lesson.

You can construct a criteria expression to find objects in the Operations Manager database. The following sections provide syntax reference information that is useful when creating a criteria expression that includes any of the following elements:

1. Comparison operators
2. Wildcard characters
3. DateTime values
4. Integer enumeration values