BTW, just realized that the question is about Access field formatting, so, if I should move, just suggest.


Excel does bookend Access in the design. The front end are all the individual Excel files with the transaction data, and the back end is the analysis and reporting. Access does the work to combining the data, while adding fields that contain reconciled data from a few lookup tables.


The resultant table is linked to from Excel files that use Excel functions to analyze and report the data.


Staying in Access, I have noticed some differences in the sequence of records from the unions. Although the intent was to have the select records in the unions in alphabetical order by file name, in at least one of the unions the select statement sequence is different than the file name order.


It's as if the unions are sorting the select statements into file name order before doing the actual extract.



Will test some more.