return data for similar fields

[kwooten]

I am trying to piece together 2 tables of data that doesn't totally match. Some of the descriptions are similar and for those that aren't, some of the address related to the data are similar. How can i piece this together? There really isn't any unique identifiers. Basically it is like if "Seven Hills" is similar to "66857-BLDG-SPRING HILL FLA SEVEN HILLS" then "66857".. Some cases i will have "101 South College St" vs "101 S College St" or even "101 South College Street" that would return another 5 digit center.. I can link a piece of the data if that would help..

[June7]

My inclination is to say, "can't". Some data is too bad to be manageable. Without key linking fields, you are up a creek ...

Clean up the data in the description field to standardize content, assign common key value - record-by-record - a tedious and time-consuming effort.

[kwooten]

fantastic... thanks for the response

[June7]

Will have to decide which 5-digit center code should be assigned to all variations of "101 South College St". How will this impact child records related to the other 5-digit center codes? This sort of data clean up is not easy if there are dependent records.

[kwooten]

not sure i follow the impact of child records..

[June7]

Suppose related child table has records that are all associated with variations of the address 101 South College St, like:

Center	Data1	Data2
66857	ABC	DEF
87631	GHI	DEF
66857	ABC	JKL
54320	GHI	JKL

If you decide that address in all its variations should be assigned CenterCode 66857 and the other two abandoned, these child records must first be changed to all reflect 66857.

However, since I don't know your data and structure, I don't know what you are really faced with, why you need to 'piece together 2 tables'.