using dates in calculations

[sarahbeth_17]

I am a rather new user of Access and am having trouble understanding th
use of formulas or as I believe access is calling them expressions.
I have fields called expiration date, status, and sign status, that al
depend on each other for their value. I want to create
formula(expression) for:

If the expiration date is >or = to todays date, I want the status fiel
to say expired, and if < to say active.

Then I would like the sign status field to display pick up sign o
nothing depending on the outcome of the status fields formula.

It seems simple enough to me but I can not get if to work. I am used t
formulas in Excel so I know I can do it their but I can keep my dat
much more organized in Access

 

[Jeff Boyce]

If I'm understanding correctly, you want to store "calculated" values, all
of which depend on the field [ExpirationDate]. It is rarely necessary to
store calculated values, and there are some very good reasons not to.

If you can do the calculations, do them in a query. That way, you don't
need to store anything, and the query-based calculations may prove to be
considerably faster than looking the data up from the hard drive.

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP