Creating a Sum Total Field in an Access Form

You can set up a tabular form in Microsoft Access that will give you an automatically updating sum total for any field with figures.

In Access go to Create . . . Form Wizard and select the Table you want to pull data from.

Choose the Tabular format.

In design view for the form, pull down the section for the Form Footer. Copy the field from the Detail that you want to add up and paste it in the Form Footer section. Double-click on it so that the Property Sheet opens up. In the Control Source field enter:

=SUM(Votes)

When the form is saved, you'll see that the figures in the field you selected are added up in a new field at the bottom.

If you change the numbers in the votes field in the detail of the form, the sum total will update automatically.