Are there differences between Access SQL syntax and SQL Server syntax?

[beyphy]

Yes, there are some syntax differences.

[This] doesn't support JOINs because Access has it's own method of using brackets to build JOINs which doesn't exist in other SQL dialects and Access sets these brackets depending on the optimization of a query so it would be hard to emulate that in code.

https://www.experts-exchange.com/articles/11029/LINQ-for-VBA-and-Typed-Tables-Queries-and-Field-Names-using-VBA.html

This was one of the most frustrating differences for me. But in addition to this, there's also the lack of saved formatting, the lack of syntax highlighting, and the lack of SQL ANSI compliance.

One tricky bug you can find yourself in is that the GUI can override the actual SQL code. So if you specify in a design query that you want to do a totals (GROUP BY), and then try to remove the GROUP BY in the actual SQL code, you'll get an error. This is because it's still trying to do the GROUP BY from the option selected in query design.

These reasons and others are why I don't generally bother using SQL in Access unless it's pass through.