Question

When LEFT JOINing two tables, is there a way to set the cells which can not be matched (NULL) to a custom value? So e.g. when the result returns, the NULL-cells actually HAVE a value, e.g. “N/A” or “Not found”?

I want to do this in MS Access 2003

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Example:

| id | value |               | id | other value |
|----|-------|   LEFT JOIN   |----|-------------|
| 1  | hello |   -- id -->   | 2  | world       |
| 2  | you   |

results in:

| id | value | other value |
| 1  | hello | NULL        |
| 2  | you   | world       |

but should be:

| id | value | other value |
| 1  | hello | custom-val  |
| 2  | you   | world       |

Answer 1

You can use Nz() to substitute an arbitrary value for a NULL;

SELECT Nz(F, "Not Present") FROM T

Would return either the value of field F, or "Not Present" if F were NULL.