Matching data

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
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Guest

Does anyone know of a way to match data records that are not exactly the same
or based on part of the field value?

i.e. ABC Carpet ie. Chubby chicken
A B C Carpets Chubby chickens .....
Field values are typed as above but are basically the same record
 
Does anyone know of a way to match data records that are not exactly the same
or based on part of the field value?

i.e. ABC Carpet ie. Chubby chicken
A B C Carpets Chubby chickens .....
Field values are typed as above but are basically the same record
Click to expand...

This is easy for a human... and incredibly difficult for a computer.
Remember, computers are just very, very fast idiots; they have no
understanding, and (except for some advanced research projects not
incorporated into Access) have no knowledge of English or of context.

Are "USPS" and "United States Postal Service" the same? Sure. How
about "Unintersting Silly Parsed Strings"? Why the former, and not the
latter?

I'm afraid your best bet will be to create queries sorting your
strings alphabetically and manually edit them.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
 
In a word: no. If the number of records is relatively small, just do it
manually. If the number of records are large, hire some cheap labor to do it.

While there are some things that might work, such as removing all the spaces
and then doing a substring match of the first few characters, chances are
there will still be plenty of mistakes. You'll need a complex computer well
versed in fuzzy logic and complex pattern matching to do the job: i.e. the
human brain.
 
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