maintain query formatting ?

[james_lankford]

I write a bunch of queries using straight sql, without the query designer

I'll write the query, run it, save the query
everything's fine

then I come back a week later to run the query again (except this time I want to change the "order by" or maybe change one thing in the "where")

so I open the query in sql view and ...

half the time it opens all nice and pretty, just the way I wrote it, just the way I saved it

select 
  field1, 
  field2
  count(*) as number_of
from
  some_table 
    as tbl 
where 
(
  (
    tbl.field3 = "x"
  ) 
  and 
  (
    tbl.field4 = "y"
  )
)
group by 
  field1, 
  field2

and half the time it opens like this

select field1, field2 count(*) as number_of from some_table as tbl where ((tbl.field3="x") and (tbl.field4="y")) group by field1, field2

WHY WHY WHY does it do that !!!

I cannot figure out why it sometimes keeps the formatting and why sometimes it doesn't

it's gotten to the point where I don't even save my queries in access anymore
I just save them a text file and open, copy, paste when I need them

 

[sheetspread]

Does preceding the query with SELECT * FROM

and ending it with AS query1 help?


How do I force MS Access to retain it's SQL formatting? - Stack Overflow

SQL Code Formatting in MS Access - The SitePoint Forums

 

[Joe4]

If you are editing your query that much, you may want to change your approach. Many programmers will create a "Selection Form", where they use a form to set their Selection Criteria (i.e. "WHERE" clause), and then have VBA build and apply the SQL code you need for that.