removing duplicates-database

[KG]

Does anyone know a way to remove duplicate entries in the works database? I
am sending a 5,000 person mailing but have many list i have compiled
together with many duplicate people. Of course, I do not want to spend the
time going through the whole list deleting them one at a time.

Thanks a ton!

[Kevin James]

Hi KG,

( Make a backup of your database before trying this. )

One way would be to make use of a spreadsheet;

Export your data (List View) to a spreadsheet.

Advance Sort the columns using up to 3 criteria boxes.

Suppose you have an Advanced sorted dataset similar to this ;

A B C D
1 NAME ADDRESS CAR
2 Fred Away Ford
3 Fred Away Ford 1
4 Fred Away Ford 2
5 Fred Home Ford 0
6 Harry Home Renault 0
7 Harry Home Renault 1
... etc

then in D3 ( 2nd data row ) type the following formula
=IF(A3=A2#AND#B3=B2#AND#C3=C2,1,0)
fill this down the column for all your records.

All unique records will be numbered as 0 in column D.

If you copy and paste column D over itself as values,
Sort the data on only column D
You may delete all rows with values greater than 0.
PROVIDED your sort and D column filter was sufficiently detailed.

HTH
--
Kevin James
Tuar Goleuni

KG wrote in message <36f90dfa.0@news>...

[David A. [MSMVC]]

This is the best solution I have ever seen and I have used it extensively.
Export your database as CSV (Comma Seperated Values) then open it in a
spreadsheet and apply this formula =AA1=IF(A1=A2,"Dup","")
This will bring up as 0 and 1 if there are duplicates, and then you can just
do a sort on those 0 and 1 and delete all the 0. Then save this file again
and open it again in the database and you will have to put your field names
back in.

--
David A.
tas...@zdnetmail.com
Never give up, just keep on giving as
everything comes to those that wait.