How to Use Left Join MS Access

Quick summary

A Left Join in MS Access lets you retrieve all records from a primary table and only matching records from a secondary table, ensuring no data is lost from the left table. Using Query Design, you can configure this join type visually in just a few steps without writing SQL manually.

Steps

1. Go to the Create tab in the ribbon.
2. Click Query Design.
3. Select the tables you want to join from the list and click Add Selected Tables.
4. Drag a field from the left (primary) table to the related field in the right (secondary) table to create a join line.
5. Right-click the join line between the tables and select Join Properties.
6. Select the option to include all records from the left table and only matching records from the right table.
7. Click OK to confirm the join type.
8. Drag the fields you want to display into the query grid.
9. Click the Run button to see the Left Join query results.