I agree with the previous posts. The article and the comment from Lutz Albers certainly helped explain an issue I have dealt with many times.
Here is my quick and easy way of remembering how the where clause affects an outer join -
If the where clause contains a reference to the table from the outer join, then the join is in effect an inner join.
That may not be a great technical explanation but it works for me.
Jeff451SQL Guru wannabe