Duplicate entries - two or more records for the same person, household, or business - are a common problem in mailing lists. FlexMail helps you to eliminate these duplicates. It does not only find the obvious exact duplicates, it also finds the near duplicates, where records probably represent the same person or business.
The Find Duplicates function of FlexMail lets you identify duplicates in a single list, generating an output file of clean data. The function works on the file that is currently linked and displayed in the datasheet.
When you select Find Duplicates, a wizard will be started that guides you through the process of setting up and starting a de-duplication task. Setting up the de-duplication task involves defining a match code that defines what you consider to be a duplicate, and selecting an action that tells FlexMail what to do when a duplicate pair of records is detected. Depending on the action selected, you can specify the output files you want to generate. For more onformation on how finding duplicates works, see How Find Duplicates, Merge, and Purge work.
Note: FlexMail also allows you to work on multiple files. If you want to merge multiple files with or without duplicate detection, or want to purge duplicates in one or more source files from a file, use the Merge and Purge functions (see Merging Files and Purging Files).
You start Find Duplicates on the Data Tools tab that is available when the datasheet is active. The wizard that appears will take you through the following steps:
Specify the de-duplication action you want to perform when a duplicate pair of records is detected:
Keep first, delete last. Select this option if you want to keep the record with the lower record number, and delete the record with the higher record number.
Keep last, delete first. Select this option if you want to keep the record with the higher record number, and delete the record with the lower record number.
Keep conditionally. This option lets you specify a condition to determine which record to keep. The condition specifies the field to compare and which record to keep. See Survivor Condition for more information.
Manually select. Select this option if you want to have the program display each duplicate group so you can choose which record or parts of the record you want to keep.
List duplicates only. Choose this option if you only want to review the duplicates. The detected duplicates will be displayed, but not be processed by FlexMail. The active file will remain unchanged.
In this step you select the fields you want to use for finding duplicates and set the compare options for each field. For more infomation see Match Codes.
Through this dialog box, you can select the output files generated by the de-duplication task. See Output Files for more information.
Note: The output files that can be selected depend on the action you have chosen. Besides, if FlexMail needs to update the currently linked file and it is in a format that FlexMail cannot update, you have to select a new survivor file.
While the processing takes place, a window will be displayed that informs you about the progress of the de-duplication task.
If the selected action requires manual intervention, FlexMail displays the Process Duplicates window.
Manually process the duplicates that FlexMail has detected. Select Process All to process your selections and close the Process Duplicates dialog. For more information on processing duplicates manually, see Manually Processing Duplicates.
The Results window marks the end of the de-duplication task. This window displays a summary of the results for the task:
The Status group summarizes the fields that you included in the match code, the number of records and files processed, and the number of duplicate records and duplicate groups detected.
The Results group summarizes the number of records processed and the number of duplicates identified in the currently linked file.
You also have the option to review the duplicate records. To do so, click the Show Dups button. For more information, see Reviewing Results.