TopValues Property

Microsoft Access Visual Basic

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TopValues Property

You can use the TopValues property to return a specified number of records or a percentage of records that meet the criteria you specify. For example, you might want to return the top 10 values or the top 25 percent of all values in a field.

Note  The TopValues property applies only to append, make-table, and select queries.

Setting

The TopValues property setting is an Integer value representing the exact number of values to return or a number followed by a percent sign (%) representing the percentage of records to return. For example, to return the top 10 values, set the TopValues property to 10; to return the top 10 percent of values, set the TopValues property to 10%.

You can't set this property in code directly. It's set in SQL view of the Query window by using a TOP n or TOP n PERCENT clause in the SQL statement.

You can also set the TopValues property by using the query's property sheet or the Top Values box on the Query Design toolbar.

Note  The TopValues property in the query's property sheet and on the Query Design toolbar is a combo box that contains a list of values and percentage values. You can select one of these values or you can type any valid setting in the text box portion of this control.

Remarks

Typically, you use the TopValues property setting together with sorted fields. The field you want to display top values for should be the leftmost field that has the Sort box selected in the query design grid. An ascending sort returns the bottommost records, and a descending sort returns the topmost records. If you specify that a specific number of records be returned, all records with values that match the value in the last record are also returned.

For example, suppose a set of employees has the following sales totals.

Sales Salesperson
90,000 Leverling
80,000 Peacock
70,000 Davolio
70,000 King
60,000 Suyama
50,000 Buchanan

If you set the TopValues property to 3 with a descending sort on the Sales field, Microsoft Access returns the following four records.

Sales Salesperson
90,000 Leverling
80,000 Peacock
70,000 Davolio
70,000 King

Note  To return the topmost or bottommost values without displaying duplicate values, set the UniqueValues property in the query's property sheet to Yes.

Example

The following example assigns an SQL string that returns the top 10 most expensive products to the RecordSource property for a form that will display the ten most expensive products.

Dim strGetSQL As String
strGetSQL = "SELECT TOP 10 Products.[ProductName] " _
    & "AS TenMostExpensiveProducts, Products.UnitPrice FROM Products " _
    & "ORDER BY Products.[UnitPrice] DESC;"
Me.RecordSource = strGetSQL