eliminate duplicates Messy Database

[zachlunch]

My boss used access 2007 for a database of representatives he met at a trade show. He went a few years to this show and has 1 table will 70k records of fields; company, full name, address, city, state, province, country, zip code, phone, and email. I just started going a computer science bachelors program so he asked me to do the best I can to find the duplicate records. I know nothing about Microsoft access or visual basic. If I can't automate or at least partially automate the process I will have to manually find and omit the duplicates. The biggest problem is the database is shit. All the duplicate names aren't unique. One person will have 3 different records with everything the same but their name will be John Smith, John S., J. Smith. In addition different people under the same company usually share the same information; phone, address, email, etc. So I cant wizard query under emails nor can I under names. I asked online for help creating something that would strip the first letter of each string under the full name files so John Smith, J Smith, and John S, would be J S under an initial field, but I didn't know how to apply it. I also was thought of maybe creating a query that would search for similar strings so if any, lets say 3, phrase its probably the same person. I have no idea, I could really use some help or for someone to set me straight and tell me its to hard for my null experience so I can start banging away at each record one at a time.

[June7]

Names and addresses data can be very hard to clean up - as you have discovered. And if the name has been entered all into one field without standard structure, you are really up a creek. This is why distributors of free publications appreciate when you let them know you are receiving duplicate mailings and tell them which ones to cancel.