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  1. #1
    UnclePaul is offline Novice
    Windows 7 64bit Access 2016
    Join Date
    Feb 2018
    Posts
    6

    Combining Records with Multiple Duplicate ID's


    Not really sure where to start in solving this problem. I've inherited a database at work that is a bit disorganized. I've taken data from a few different tables and combined them all into one table. The issue I have is that some of the information from the different tables overlaps, causing me to have multiple entries for each record that I want in my final table. I have 4 different ID numbers (Letters and Numbers) that are all unique to one facility/record (at least I think so). The rest of my fields are pieces of information about the facilities, things like addresses, phone numbers, various dates, owner information, etc. that all match up with these ID's. An example of what this might look like:
    ID1 ID2 ID3 ID4 Name Address Owner Phone Number
    W16 F69 761 Facility1 123 Street 555 5555
    W16 F69 Facility1 123 St John Smith
    W16 F69 F6901 123 Street Smith, John
    w16 761 Facility_1 John Smith 555-5555

    As you see, not every piece of information is formatted in the same way, the ID's are all standard but the other information has been entered in varying formats depending on different people's input styles in the past.
    What I want to do is somehow combine each of these entries for the same facility into one record so that it looks like this:
    ID1 ID2 ID3 ID4 Name Address Owner Phone Number
    W16 F69 F6901 761 Facility1 123 Street John Smith 555-5555

    However, not every record in the table has every piece of information. There are various facilities that have not been assigned and of the 4 ID's yet, and there are some that only have 1-3 of them.
    Once I get everything cleaned up and combined I will use a form to go through each record to enter any missing data into the fields, so I was thinking that I might be able to use a form to bring up all entries with the same ID1, for example, and making the necessary adjustments to combine the information.
    Right now I have almost 7000 records so it would take quite a while to manually do this in a spreadsheet. After spending some time searching online for a solution I decided I would come here to ask for help. Any ideas?
    (Please let me know which pieces of information I left out for you guys to help, thanks)

  2. #2
    June7's Avatar
    June7 is offline VIP
    Windows 10 Access 2010 32bit
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    The Great Land
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    53,772
    Classic GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out) data. There is no easy shortcut to fix. It will be a tedious and time-consuming effort.

    Name parts should be in separate fields - LastName, FirstName.

    Can do some preliminary clean up for the entire db. Such as Replace operation on the ID1 field to convert to all upper case (actually, this might require an SQL UPDATE action). Replace on Name field to eliminate the underscore. Replace on PhoneNumber to change space to hyphen.
    How to attach file: http://www.accessforums.net/showthread.php?t=70301 To provide db: copy, remove confidential data, run compact & repair, zip w/Windows Compression.

Please reply to this thread with any new information or opinions.

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