Assistance writing a query to show employees who have not completed a training class

[shell159]

I am a novice user of Access. My last database class was in 1999 and it was using Paradox 5.0, not Access, so forgive my simplistic nature. I have tried to search for an answer myself, but I am beginning to think I may be over my head. I am working on a database for my employer to track employee hours. I currently have 3 tables (not including my switchboard).



One table is a course list table that tracks the class information and contains the following fields.
ID (Auto Number & PK)
Course Title
7 fields that track break down of course hours
Total Training Hours (calculated based on adding 6 of the 7 hour fields)

The 2nd table tracks employees and contains the following fields:
Employee ID (PK)
First Name
Last Name
Employee Name (Calculated to combine first and last)

My third table is to actually track who took which class and when. It has the following fields.
ID (auto number & PK)
Course Date
Course Title FK
Employee ID FK

I have had the basic database up and running for a couple of months now and my employer has asked for an added feature that I am not sure how to even start to do or if it is possible. Right now I have a table that shows who took a class and when. Some of the training classes are optional, but others are mandatory. They are wanting a feature to pull a list of employees who have not had a particular class to eliminate the need to manually compare the list of those who have taken the class with an employee list to see who is left. Some of the classes are mandatory to have each year also, so they would like to be able to see who did not have the training class in 2015, 2016, etc. I have searched and searched, but have yet to come up with something that gives me the result I need.

Any help or direction that you could give me would be greatly appreciated. This one exceeds my competency I am afraid.

[ranman256]

you want an OUTER join....
tEmployee table, tEmpClasses table, and tClasses.

JOIN on these fields
tEmps.EmpID --> tEmpClasses.EmpID
tEmpClasses.Course Title --> tClasses.CourseTitle

set the JOIN to show ALL tClasses, and SOME tEmpClasses
this will show you whats missing.

[shell159]

Sorry for my incompetence when it comes to this, but can you walk me through how you would accomplish this? My attempts have been unsuccessful. I don't have any background in writing SQL. Everything I have done previously, I have been able to do in the query design window. My attempts so far keep resulting in errors about an ambiguous outer join.