Outer Join Creating Duplicates In Dynamic Query Search Results

Now that i have read this again, i think it could be summed up into one question...if i have a form based off a query with an outer join that has various duplicate records, is there a way to use the recordset in an if statement that says something like if this recordID = that recordID then dont show one of them...hence not showing the duplicate field data in the form.


If you want a more specific description of the problem, read on, otherwise don't read on.

Hi All,

So I hope I can explain this ok....here goes....

I have a search using dynamic queries: I have a form where the user can put in various information he wants to search to find a record. In this case it is searching for Hotels. So the user can search a country to see all of the hotels in that country. Also, the user can search an interest like Beach or Nature to see those hotels that apply. Obviously each hotel may have more than one interest so I have a 1-many relationship with a table called Hotels_Interests.

The kicker, and you can likely already see why, is that the user does not have to fill out every search field. He may search Country&Interest, or just one or the other, or leave everything blank to see all hotels in the database. The results are simply ordered by HotelID or something like that in a form that is based off the dynamic query. The dynamic query is of course just based off the query i explained, but with criteria added in.

The problem is with the query that i am basing this search off of. Right now it has the main Hotels table as well as the 1-Many table Hotels_Interests and even another that is 1-Many Hotels_HotelTypes (say All Inclusive, Resort, etc.). So this query has various 1-Many tables as well as the main Hotels. Now, if i fill in all of those fields in the search form, there will obviously not be any duplicates returned, which is super. But if i leave Hotel_HotelTypes search field blank, i will be returned with the same hotel twice or more times, which is my problem, because i want nice search results.

I have heard of people using Union queries to get rid of duplicates but this obviously does not solve my problem as i do not want to just get rid of these entries. What i think i want is some VBA method or whatever of showing in my search results each HotelID that meets the search criteria only one time.

Right now i have it working with If statements that say if the user has left a specific search criteria blank then base the search off a different query. This is obviously crazy and is only a temp fix. Now that i want three or more 1-many tables in my query, i would be talking about if statements for like 6 or more queries, insane.

I apologize for the length of this, but i wanted to be perfectly clear. I feel like it should be not too hard, like using a record set for the form and not showing certain records or something, but i am not sure how to do it.

Thanks so much. Dillon