Sometimes, we need the inverse of a condition, or cases WHERE a value does not equal something. To do this, we prefix our equals with the "not operator", !=, to invert the condition.

For example, to retrieve a list of Opportunities that are not in the 'Closed Won' stage, we can use the following query:

SELECT Name, StageName, Type
FROM Opportunity 
WHERE StageName != 'Closed Won'

Let's say you want to look at all the global accounts, excluding those in the United States. 🌍

SELECT Name, AnnualRevenue, BillingCountry
FROM Account
WHERE BillingCountry != 'United States' 

Additionally, let's say we want to find all the Contacts with an Email so we can put together our distribution list. We can do this by looking for Contacts WHERE their Email is not null.

SELECT Name, Email, Title
FROM Contact 
WHERE Email != null

Similar to our numeric equality comparison, when using the != for numbers, we just specify the value without any ’ single quotes. For example, this query will retrieve all Opportunities that do not have a 100% probability of closing.

SELECT Name, Probability, StageName
FROM Opportunity
WHERE Probability != 100