Here is a query built with the query designer

SELECT Sites_1.permid, Sites_1.site_name, Sites_1.status,;
  Sites_1.startdate, History_1.permid, History_1._year, History_1.xyear,;
  History_1.xbaseyear, History_1.xsiteid, History_1.surveys_distributed,;
  History_1.validsurveys, History_1.responserate, History_1.afv,;
 FROM ;
     NEWBLUEBOOK!SITES Sites_1 ;
    LEFT OUTER JOIN NEWSURVEYS!HISTORY History_1 ;
   ON  Sites_1.permid = History_1.permid;
 WHERE  Sites_1.status = ( "TRP" );
   AND  History_1._year = ( 2005.0000 );
 ORDER BY Sites_1.startdate

It produces 91 records with a startdate in 1989 (and others) which is what we would expect. If I change the _year in the where clause to 2007, it produces 51 records with a startdate in 1989 which is not what I want. With the left join I would expect to still get all of the records where sites.status = "TRP", in this case 91 records, and the history fields as NULL if there is no match. But it looks like the where clause is filtering.

How can I ALWAYS get ALL of the status="TRP" sites matched to just 2007 history data, leaving the history data NULL if there is no match?

Thanks