scrunchmuppet

I think i've sorted it now, It is a bit confusing but basically I wanted to compare table 1 against against table 2 and return fields that did not have a match AND ALSO the fields that returned NULL values. The fields that had a value that DID NOT match eg; fields with the number '7' where returned BUT the 'NULL' values DID NOT return.  Result I am getting +---------+-------------+ | message |  viewer  id  | +---------+-------------+ |    5        |        7        | +---------+-------------+    Result that I really want +---------+-------------+ | message |  viewer  id  | +---------+-------------+ |    1        |      NULL    | |    3        |      NULL    | |    4        |      NULL    | |    5        |        7        | +---------+-------------+   

I'm really stuck here, come to a grinding stop just because NULL is returned in my table join. Can't get past this  :-\ I have 2 tables, 1 that holds messages and 1 that holds a record to determin if a user has viewed a message or not. Results look like this. +---------+-------------+ | message |  viewer  id  | +---------+-------------+ |    1        |      NULL    | |    2        |        5        | |    3        |      NULL    | |    4        |      NULL    | |    5        |        7        | +---------+-------------+ Record 2 has been viewed by user 5 Example; I want to SELECT all records that DO NOT equal 'viewer id' '5' but only 1 result is being returned 'viewer id' '7', the rows with NULL values are being ignored?. Result... +---------+-------------+ | message |  viewer  id  | +---------+-------------+ |    5        |        7        | +---------+-------------+  No rows with NULL value are returned? I thought records 1,3 & 4 would also be returned but this is not happening possibly because of the NULL value. Is there way to show the records that DO NOT match and return like below +---------+-------------+ | message |  viewer  id  | +---------+-------------+ |    1        |      NULL    | |    3        |      NULL    | |    4        |      NULL    | |    5        |        7        | +---------+-------------+    Or am I approaching this wrong and there is a better way to do this? Thanks for your help...