Hi John,

An untested idea, may not even work.

SELECT * FROM tableA
    LEFT JOIN tableB ON tableA.ID=@tableB.ID
    LEFT JOIN tableC ON tableA.ID2=@tableC.ID
    LEFT JOIN tableD ON tableA.ID3=@tableD.ID
WHERE 
	( @tableB.ID IS NOT NULL OR NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM tableB)
			AND
	( @tableC.ID IS NOT NULL OR NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM tableC)
			AND
	( @tableD.ID IS NOT NULL OR NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM tableD)

>Thanks for your reply as always Sergey. However, I must of not been very clear in my problem.
>
>I know about using the OUTER JOIN but in this particular case I either only want to pull all "or" pull only those that match depending upon if lookup table contains any records to do a JOIN. Using OUTER JOIN will "always" pull all from one table and this is not what I want.
>