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Matching

Matching identifies records that may be duplicates. For example, it identifies Bill J. Smith and William Smythe as possible duplicates. It also identifies International Business Machines and IBM as possible duplicates. If data you are adding or modifying is a possible duplicate, the Possible Matches dialog box will appear when you try to save the record. The Possible Matches dialog box lists existing records that may be duplicates of the record you are adding or modifying. You can choose to add the new record or select an existing record from this list. If you select an existing record, the record you were creating is deleted.

When records are identified as being duplicates, you must use the merge record functionality to combine them. For more information on merging records, see Merging Duplicate Records.

TIP:  Avoid using apostrophes in your data, because these are used in querying as string delimiters. If you run queries on your data, you will receive error messages if you have apostrophes in your data.


 Fundamentals 
 Published: 14 August 2003