The Or operator lets you specify two or more criteria, and your data must meet at least one of the criteria. In an address book database, you might use this operator to find people living in Chapel Hill or Durham or Raleigh. The Not operator simply eliminates certain criteria from consideration. If you wanted to search your address book for everyone who does not live in the 27514 Zip Code, then you would type Not 27514 as your criteria. Commonly, you will use some combination of these operators.
Access provides a helping hand for designing Or queries.
Instead of entering the full statement just mentioned, you could have entered Faulkner in the Criteria cell, then moved down one cell and entered Joyce. Access assumes that each extra Criteria row under the first one uses an Or operator. And and Or operators at the same time. You can combine the above operations. Access reads across each row of criteria from left to right, then starts moves down row by row.