I had just the same problem. 2 text and one date attribute in a select. First sort the date descending - instead of 25 rows I had 31. Sort date ascending, I had 110 rows instead of 25. On SQL Server it was as expected... always the number of TOP x. In MS Access I had to add ALL select fields into the order clause, to have the concrete number. Looks like it took other dates identical with the 25th in the result..