Meaning of the different icons in expression builder

[BarbaraT]

I'm having trouble with an expression in a report field, and am wondering if there's an issue with one of the underlying fields.

In expression builder, I can start typing a field name, and it will pop up with choices that match what I've typed so far. I can't figure out how to enter a screen shot in this posting (can anyone tell me how?), but the choices that pop up include some with a little hammer and wrench icon in front, and others with a spreadsheet column icon. What's the difference?

The underlying query calculates the two fields similarly (pulling from other queries). In fact, when I go into the underlying query to add a field and get a similar pop-up list, all of the fields (including the ones with a little hammer etc here), have the column highlighted icon.

The problem I'm running into is in an IIF statement. It's evaluating the IIF correctly, but in the situation where the first part of the IIF is false, it's not pulling the correct field (in the "then" part), it's pulling a totally unrelated field. That makes no sense to me, since the field it's pulling isn't even referenced in the expression. But, since the one I want has the little hammer icon, and the one it's pulling has the spreadsheet column icon, I'm wondering if that's part of the issue.

Any idea what's going on?

 

[xenou]

I very rarely use the expression builder, and I don't recognize any of these icons. You must be using a recent version of Access (or else I *really* don't use the expression builder very much).

Personally I'd recommend just typing out your expression without using the expression builder. Then, hopefully, problem solved ... !