Michael, read this article, then post some sample data and ddl. http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/. It's hard to figure out what you are trying to get at without seeing what you are seeing. I would probably get rid of the right outer join if I were you. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is easy to become confused if you are having left and right joins in the same query. Once you post the data and ddl, I'm sure you will get a good solution.