Why does my left join in Access have fewer rows than the left table?

Question

I have two tables in an MS Access 2010 database: TBLIndividuals and TblIndividualsUpdates. They have a lot of the same data, but the primary key may not be the same for a gi

Answer 1

This should never happen. Unless rows are being inserted/deleted in the meantime,

the query:

SELECT *
FROM a LEFT JOIN b
         ON whatever ;

should never return less rows than:

SELECT *
FROM a ;

If it happens, it's a bug. Are you sure the queries are exactly like this (and you have't omitted some detail, like a WHERE clause)? Are you sure that the first returns 4149 rows and the second one 4103 rows? You could make another check by changing the * above to COUNT(*).