like this

 

select * from Patients P
where not exists
 (select 1 from PatientFiles PF
 where attachmentfield = '.pco' and  PF.ClientId = P.ClientId)

 

or you can do this in crystal using a group select process

pull all records into the report (outer joining the two tables)

group on the patients.id field

create a formual field (called 'flag' or whatever you want) to find rows with the '.pco' value

//flag

if table.field = '.pco' then 1 else 0

make sure this formula is set to use "default values for Nulls"

insert a summary as teh SUM of the flag formula field at the patient group footer

SUM(@flag,patient.id)

Now all of your patients missing the pco will have a sum of 0

use that in the group select criteria

SUM(@flag,patient.id)=0

 

 

It seems that either the original group on record id or the group select sum is preventing me from grouping this result set by the person who wrote the report (i.e. - now that I have the list of reports by missing attachments I need to group it by the report writer to identify the frequent offenders)

 

I tried adding report writer to the grouping layer but it did not truly group them together.

 

Also, when you get a chance, no hurry, I posted a furthering education question in the "Ask the Author" section of the forum.