 <p>You want to </p> <p><em>If an item is "already" in t2, but NOT in t1 then I would like to avoid executing an INSERT statement.</em></p> <p>So insert should take place on negation of above statement i.e.</p> <p><em>item should not be in t2 and item should be present in t1</em></p> <pre><code>insert into target_table( column list ) select ( column list) from source_table where item not in (select item from t2) and item in (select item from t1) </code></pre> <p><em>what I meant was that if the article is NOT in t2, THEN I want to insert it into t1. Its pretty simple really</em> </p> <pre><code> insert into t1 ( &lt;column list&gt;) select &lt;column list&gt; from source_table where item not in (select item from t2) </code></pre> <p>You can use</p> <pre><code> IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM t2 WHERE item like '%'+@itemvalue+'%') BEGIN INSERT INTO t1 VALUES (@itemvalue) END </code></pre>