M
Mike Masri
My boss has giving me the unfortunate task of updating and
merging the companies contacts.
This is problematic in that there are 3 contact databases.
all 3, he reckons are about 80% identical. What he wants
is to merge that last twenty percent of difference across
all 3 databases.
what i planned on doing is first export each contact
database from outlook into an access table. then take each
contact table, using that as the control list, and any
duplicates in the other 2 will be deleted, leaving behind
two new tables of non-duplicates. (which should be run
against each other as well before bieng merged into the
control list.
for example.. C1 will be run against C2 to create A1 (the
difference between C1 and C2), A1 gets added to C1 and
then C1 will be run against C3 which should create A2. A2
is merged into C1 and then you have the first Contact
database done. now i just have to do that with C2 and C3.
Don't know if you understand that, but if you do and you
are asking why not just merge all three by removing
duplicates and then viola.. well the problem is in the
notes. Even the identical contacts in each database has
different notes. C1 is the bosses contact database for
example, and even though C2 has a copy of "Mr. Burns" from
C1; C2, owned by the Human Resource manager, has completly
different notes to the version of the contact in C1. The
boss doesn't want the HR's notes, and vice versa.
Each owner of the database, wants to keep his database,
and only add those contacts the others have and he don't,
without changing he already has.
this is a tedious and heartbreaking job.. what i would
like to know is if there is an actual procedure, or macro,
or ANYTHING that would automate this task or make it much
simpler and quicker for me to do.
Thanks in advance for your help
Mike
merging the companies contacts.
This is problematic in that there are 3 contact databases.
all 3, he reckons are about 80% identical. What he wants
is to merge that last twenty percent of difference across
all 3 databases.
what i planned on doing is first export each contact
database from outlook into an access table. then take each
contact table, using that as the control list, and any
duplicates in the other 2 will be deleted, leaving behind
two new tables of non-duplicates. (which should be run
against each other as well before bieng merged into the
control list.
for example.. C1 will be run against C2 to create A1 (the
difference between C1 and C2), A1 gets added to C1 and
then C1 will be run against C3 which should create A2. A2
is merged into C1 and then you have the first Contact
database done. now i just have to do that with C2 and C3.
Don't know if you understand that, but if you do and you
are asking why not just merge all three by removing
duplicates and then viola.. well the problem is in the
notes. Even the identical contacts in each database has
different notes. C1 is the bosses contact database for
example, and even though C2 has a copy of "Mr. Burns" from
C1; C2, owned by the Human Resource manager, has completly
different notes to the version of the contact in C1. The
boss doesn't want the HR's notes, and vice versa.
Each owner of the database, wants to keep his database,
and only add those contacts the others have and he don't,
without changing he already has.
this is a tedious and heartbreaking job.. what i would
like to know is if there is an actual procedure, or macro,
or ANYTHING that would automate this task or make it much
simpler and quicker for me to do.
Thanks in advance for your help
Mike