Update Query to Assign ID for Company

[orbojeff]

I have a Large Table of Contacts some are from a unique company while
others are from the same company.
I would like to create an update query to assign a company ID for each
unique company.
Therefore my table would look like this

Contact Company ID
Joe Google 1
John Google 1
Jeff Yahoo 2
Mary MSN 3
Jane MSN 3

Thanks
Jeff

 

[John Spencer]

I would create a table with two fields and then populate the table.
Table Company
ID (autonumber)
CompanyName (Text)

Now use an Append query to populate that table with the unique company names
from the original table

Once this table is populated, you can use it to do an update query on your
original table.

Then you can start cleaning up the company names and making Google match
Google Inc etc.