How do I delete similar (not identical) duplicate records?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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G

Guest

Have the need to delete similar records that have differenent field data.
(Eg. "John, Doe," vs. "John Doe,,"

I do not have a primary key for each record.

Thank you in advance for your help.
 
You will have to have identical or at least "Like" data, but this, at best,
matches an exact portion of a string. If the comma delimitation is the only
issue, add another field to your table and udpate that field to contain a
plain (non-delimited ) version of the field data there. Just searching &
replacing all commas with nothing would get this field to "John Doe" in both
cases.

Or, alternatively, split the names into first/last fields, without commas in
either one, then search for duplicates on the first/last combination.

If there is no consistency such as this (i.e. location of the commas, etc),
then you'll probably be going through a lot of records manually.
 
Thanks, Brian!

Though your insights were helpful, they confirmed what I feared. Indeed, I
need to do them manually, since a mere column addition wouldn't help as there
are too many variables with each record. Having to do it manually. Can you
say "Carpel Tunnel Syndrome?" Gone through about 25K records so far and am
about 3/4 done...
 
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