merging files

[James Cook]

At 2:25 PM -0700 6/10/08, Rob Bier wrote:
>For reasons not worth going into, the community radio station where 
>I volunteer has at least 38 copies of its CD database.  Many of the 
>records in each copy duplicate those in other copies; some records 
>exist only in a single copy.  All new records now are being entered 
>into the same database.  Obviously, it would be preferable to have 
>all records (more than 30,000 of them) in the same place.  How do we 
>do this?  Can the existing files be merged so that only unique 
>records remain in the merged file, so that duplicates are 
>eliminated?  Are there other ways to clean up what years of sloppy 
>habits have caused?
>
>I have reviewed the Panorama Handbook without finding any clues. 
>Panorama Help was not loaded when the program was installed.  The 
>person who set up the system  has departed this life.

The place to start is to merge them all together, then sort the field 
with the titles. Use the Math menu to UnPropagate the field, which 
will empty duplicated names and leave just one of each. Select those 
that are not equal to "", meaning literally empty and Remove 
Unselected.

If there are no other issues, that would do it.

Other issues would be cases where the titles have been entered 
differently, even regarding capitalization. Capitalization is easy to 
overcome though. Use a FormulaFill on the field for upperword to make 
just the first letter of each word uppercase. You can combine it with 
strip( to remove leading or trailing spaces.

If overall it's too many databases to merge and handle at once, do it 
one, two or a few at a time. Use the Macro Recorder to record the 
process and you can just run it each time rather than remembering all 
the steps.


-- 
James Cook
JC at JamesCook.biz
720-252-7042

Proficiencies
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Founder of HindSight Ltd.
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