Adding a Constant Row Result to SQL Query - MS Access

Question

Say I have a table "tblItems":

*ID*    |     *Name*
1       |   First Item
2       |  Second Item

and I want this to be populated in a drop-down in a form. How would I add a row:

ALL     |    SHOW ALL

to become

*ID*    |     *Name*
1       |   First Item
2       |  Second Item
ALL     |    SHOW ALL

with one query to place in the Row Source for the combo box? I haven't been able to find Access syntax to do this..

AFAIK, I need syntax similar to

SELECT ID, Name FROM tblItems
UNION
SELECT 0, "All" FROM SOME.SYSTEM.DUMMY.TABLE

what I can't find is Access' version of that dummy table. I don't really want to have a separate table just to store one row for one form... but from what I've been reading I may have to.

Answer 1

you could do something like this:

select ID, Name
from tblItems
union all
select 'ALL', 'SHOW ALL'

if you always wanted it to show up on the bottom, you'd have to get a bit more complicated.

Per comments, I realized that Access does not support a SELECT statement without a FROM clause, which is annoying. A workaround would be to create a table tblAll (syntax may require modification):

create table tblAll(ID varchar(15), Name varchar(30));
insert into tblAll(ID, Name) values ('ALL', 'SHOW ALL');

then you can do:

select ID, Name
from tblAll
union all
select str(ID) as ID, Name
from tblItems

Answer 2

What I do is use a SELECT TOP 1 statement and use the existing table name, so it looks like this:

SELECT ID, Name FROM tblItems
UNION
SELECT TOP 1 'ALL', 'SHOW ALL' FROM tblItems

That will give you the single row along with the selection from your existing table. You could use any table you want for the TOP 1 row.

Answer 3

You can use UNION ALL, however, you have a mismatch between the constants and the columns ("ALL" is not an integer). You might do something like:

select ID, NAME from tblItems
union all
select 0, 'SHOW ALL'

On the application side, interpret ID of 0 as "SHOW ALL". Or, convert ID to a string.

select str(ID), NAME from tblItems
union all
select 'ALL', 'SHOW ALL'

Answer 4

Just want to fix Jeremy Holovacs' answer to work in MS Access. This way you can use the same table and not have to create a dummy table.

SELECT ID, Name
FROM tblItems
UNION ALL
SELECT TOP 1 'ALL', 'SHOW ALL' 
FROM tblItems

Answer 5

Mind you, the following only works if there are any rows in the table, if you've got an empty table, it won't work.

SELECT ID, Name
FROM tblItems
UNION ALL
SELECT TOP 1 'ALL', 'SHOW ALL' 
FROM tblItems