Question

I tried using Access for queries and it returns extremely unexpected results (where it would return records from contacts table that didn’t even appear in the temp_query:

 SELECT contacts.names_1, contacts.names_2, contacts.addresses, contacts.cities, contacts.us_states_and_canada, contacts.zip_codes
 FROM contacts, temp_query
 WHERE 
   (((temp_query.first_name) Like "*" & [contacts].[names_1] & "*") 
       AND ((temp_query.last_name) Like "*" & [contacts].[names_1] & "*")) 
  OR 
   (((temp_query.first_name) Like "*" & [contacts].[names_2] & "*") 
       AND ((temp_query.last_name) Like "*" & [contacts].[names_2] & "*"));

I thought the above would make sense since the strings in the first_name and last_name of temp_query can be in name_1 of contacts and the the first_name and last_name of temp_query can be in name_2 of contacts . But I don’t think first_name can be in name_1 and last_name in name_2 and visa versa.

Someone recommended this, but this ultimately only returned a single record where it should have at least returned 70 (not to mention it took 35 minutes for the query to bring the result):

Criteria: (in first_name column): Like "*" & [contacts].[name1] & "*"  (in last_name column) like "*" & [[contacts].[name2] & "*"
Or:       (in first_name column): Like "*" & [contacts].[name2] & "*"  (in last_name column) Like "*" & [[contacts].[name1]  & "*"

So I’m not sure what should be the right criteria for the intended effect.

Answer 1

I think this is what you are looking for. You can just paste this into your SQL View

SELECT contacts.names_1, contacts.names_2, contacts.addresses, contacts.cities, contacts.us_states_and_canada, contacts.zip_codes
FROM contacts, temp_query
WHERE 
(
contacts.names_1  Like "*" & temp_query.first_name    & "*" 
and 
contacts.names_1  Like "*" & temp_query.last_name    & "*" 

)
OR
(
contacts.names_2  Like "*" & temp_query.first_name    & "*" 
and 
contacts.names_2  Like "*" & temp_query.last_name    & "*" 
)
;

Your original where clause was looking for when contacts.name_1 was in first_name and in last_name or if contacts.name_2 was in first_name and in the last_name.