The Relationship Management application area enables you to search for contact duplicates. The contact duplicate search only applies to contact companies (and not to contact persons).
There are two ways of searching for duplicates. You can:
have the program automatically search for duplicates each time you create contacts. To do so, you must place a check mark in the Autosearch for Duplicates field in the Relationship Management Setup window.
search for duplicates manually. In this case, you must do it periodically, for example, after you have entered a new contact.
When searching for duplicates, the program uses search strings. You can set up search strings in the Duplicate Setup window, by combining the first and last characters of any of the following fields in the contact table: Name, Name 2, Address, Address 2, Post Code, City, Phone No., and VAT Registration No.
Each time you generate the duplicate search (or each time you create a contact company), the program compares the new contact's search string with the search strings of the other contacts. If the percentage of identical strings is equal or greater than the search hit percentage you have defined in the Relationship Management Setup window, the program considers the contact a duplicate.
In the Duplicate Setup window, you can set up the following search strings:
|
Field |
Part of Field |
Length |
|
Name |
First |
5 |
|
Name |
Last |
5 |
|
Address 1 |
First |
5 |
|
Address 1 |
Last |
5 |
|
City |
First |
5 |
|
City |
Last |
5 |
|
Post Code |
First |
5 |
|
Post Code |
Last |
5 |
|
VAT Registration No. |
First |
5 |
|
VAT Registration No. |
Last |
5 |
For a contact with the following information:
United Furnishing Ltd.
Lindon Road
London SW39GY
VAT Registration No.:123456789
the program will create the following search strings:
UNITE; SLDT.; 45LIN; NROAD; LONDO; ONDON; SW39G; W39GY; 12345; 45678
If the search hit percentage you have defined is 60%, when six or more of these ten strings are identical to another contact's search strings, the program considers the two contacts duplicates.
The program keeps a list of the duplicates it has found in the Contact Duplicates window. In this window, you can specify that the two contacts are separate contacts. If the two contacts are actually true duplicates, you must remove one of them manually by deleting the duplicate's contact card.