Merging Duplicate Records

You must follow a slightly different procedure to merge child duplicate records. If you do not follow the correct procedure, orphan records can be created. Use the following procedure to merge duplicate records. This task is a step in Process of Merging Duplicate Records.

To merge duplicate records

1. In the Administration - Data Quality screen, click the Duplicate XXX view for the type of record you have selected, where XXX is either Accounts, Contacts, or Prospects.

   For example, click the Duplicate Accounts view.

2. In the Duplicate view, drill down on one of the duplicate records.

   The appropriate Duplicate XXX Resolution view appears. The child applet shows the list of duplicate rows with the parent record appearing as the first row.

3. If two or more records appear to be duplicates, enter a sequence number in the Sequence field for each record.

4. Edit the records, if necessary.

   For example, you might want to keep some values from fields in records to be deleted. In this case, you can make fields NULL in what will be the remaining records. The values from the corresponding fields in the deleted records are then used to populate the NULL fields after the sequenced merge.

5. Select the records to be merged.

6. Click Merge.

   The records are merged to produce one new record. The record with the lowest sequence number assigned is retained after the merge. Missing fields in the retained record are populated from corresponding fields in the deleted records, as described in Sequenced Merges.