MS Access Group By breaks when using a date - date

Question

For some reason using a date/time field in a select query with Group By in Access 2010 breaks (records are not properly "grouped by" the text field first, showing the same "aTextField" value multiple times). I am able to replicate the issue in a simple, one table query. Ex:
SELECT aTextField, SUM(aIntField) AS SumOfaIntField
FROM simpleTable
GROUP BY aTextField, aDateField
HAVING aDateField >= Date()
ORDER BY aTextField;
As soon as you remove the "aDateField" from the query (Group By and Having lines) then it works properly. I can even remove the HAVING line and it still breaks. Leaving me to believe that it is something with the Group By.
Any feedback would be great. Thanks!
EDIT More details
**simpleTable**
--------------------------------------------
| ID | aTextField | aIntField | aDateField |
============================================
| 1 | John Doe | 1 | 3/14/2013 |
| 2 | John Doe | | 3/15/2013 |
| 3 | Jane Doe | 1 | 3/15/2013 |
| 4 | John Doe | 2 | 3/18/2013 |
| 5 | Jane Doe | 1 | 3/19/2013 |
| 6 | John Doe | | 3/20/2013 |
| 7 | John Doe | 3 | 3/21/2013 |
| 8 | Jane Doe | 1 | 3/19/2013 |
| 9 | John Doe | | 3/22/2013 |
| 10 | Jane Doe | 2 | 3/20/2013 |
| 11 | Jane Doe | | 3/21/2013 |
| 12 | Jane Doe | | 3/22/2013 |
--------------------------------------------
**Expected Result**
-------------------------------
| aTextField | SumOfaIntField |
===============================
| Jane Doe | 4 |
| John Doe | 3 |
-------------------------------
**Actual Result**
-------------------------------
| aTextField | SumOfaIntField |
===============================
| Jane Doe | 2 |
| Jane Doe | 2 |
| Jane Doe | |
| Jane Doe | |
| John Doe | |
| John Doe | 3 |
| John Doe | |
-------------------------------
So what appears to be happening is that there is a seperate row for each date as well. I just need to filter by the date and not necessarily Group By it. However, Access will not accept the query without grouping it. Options?

Answer 1

You're grouping by aTextField and aDateField. Perhaps simpleTable includes rows where the date is the same, but the time of day is different. In that case your grouping would produce a row for each date/time combination.
Whether or not that was the explanation, you should check what the db engine actually evaluates by including aDateField in the SELECT list.
SELECT aTextField, aDateField, SUM(aIntField)
FROM simpleTable
GROUP BY aTextField, aDateField
HAVING aDateField >= Date()
ORDER BY aTextField;
Also consider using a WHERE instead of HAVING clause:
WHERE aDateField >= Date()
Based on your sample data, I suspect you want ...
SELECT aTextField, SUM(aIntField)
FROM simpleTable
GROUP BY aTextField
WHERE aDateField >= Date()
ORDER BY aTextField;

Answer 2

You should be able to use the following:
SELECT aTextField, SUM(aIntField) AS SumOfaIntField
FROM simpleTable
WHERE aDateField >= Date()
GROUP BY aTextField
ORDER BY aTextField;
You will notice that I removed the GROUP BY on the aDateField column. Since you want the total for each aTextField, then you do not need to group by the date. Grouping by date will result in a separate row for each distinct date.
Note: this query was tested in MS Access 2010 and generated your desired result.

Answer 3

I think you are misunderstanding on how GROUP BY works. You should be seeing the same aTextField once for each unique textfield/datetime combination
Sample
a 2012-01-01
a 2012-01-01
b 2012-01-01
b 2012-01-02
b 2012-01-02
group by aTextField, aDateField
a 2012-01-01
b 2012-01-01
b 2012-01-02
group by aTextField
a
b