Not ?user, just plain ?

However, I'd have to say that I'm surprised that the other query works. There may be different flavors of Access database engines. I was under the impression that you couldn't use a named parameter in ANY Access query, but it looks kind of like you can. There is a difference between the two examples, though. In the first post, you used @user, then added a parameter named @user. In the snippet that you say works, you use @user in the query and just plain user as the name of the parameter. ?user certainly won't work, as that wasn't what I meant anyways, so the fact that that doesn't work means nothing.

What I would suggest trying is to go back to your original code and change it to match the code you say works. If @user in the query and just plain "user" in the parameter name works, I'd find that interesting.