Thanks for the reply Sergey. That is definitely a less complicated query, but the same problem still exists with it. When the query is placed into the query-builder within VS, the syntax is changed to include "{ oj ... }" around the outer join. The ole db driver provider for vfp then gives an error message when you execute the query: "Command contains unrecognized phrase/keyword"

Do you know if this is a known issue with the ole db driver for vfp? It would appear that vfp doesn't understand that "{ oj ... }" syntax.