How to identify similar (not exact match) records and assign them a common ID?

[annah]

I have a set of data which contains vendor names. There are entries that are exact matches, and entries that are close matches. For example I could have "ABC Company," "ABC Company Inc," "ABC Company - City1," and "ABC Company - City2."

From this data set, I want to create a table that associates each of these entries with the same ID number, so that I can analyze the other fields in the data set as a single vendor instead of four different vendors.

I will be continually adding data so I would like to be able to run this periodically and not just once.



Any ideas?

[ranman256]

You can try a union query that has 2 queries; 1 for exact and 1 for wildcards.

select * from table where [field] like "*" & forms!myForm!txtBox & "*"

[orange]

You may find some ideas in this similar post in UtterAccess from a couple of years back.

Good luck.