How Do I Start Thinking About This Multiple Criteria Query?

Embarrassingly, I'm not even to the point where I can ask a specific question about the query(ies) I think I need.

Here's where I'm starting from and where I want to go... maybe it will make enough sense for somebody to point me in the right direction.

I have sales data that contains line items for every item sold over the past X number of years. For each line, there are six key attributes that I'm concerned with.

For simplicity here's a scaled down example of the data for each line.

PART, PART_FAM, TRANS_DATE, FAM_GROUP, TRANS_AMT, OVS_CODE

For each attribute, there are at least five possibilities.

I have been asked to find monthly sales trends on about 20 unique combinations of these various attributes. An example might be, the monthly sales totals for:


TRANS_DATE = 1/1/06 to 1/31/06
PART_FAM = PIN
FAM_GROUP = 01xx
OVS_CODE = 2

Then a SUM for the TRANS_AMT.


I've set up a query that can give me the information I'm looking for one month at a time, but I want to believe there is a way to have Access do some of the grunt work, rather than me having to change the variables one by one and copy/paste each result into my new file.

Is there some reading or previous posts I could review that might get me thinking about this in the right way?

Thanks in advance!