My client has found over 1000 duplicates in their database of over 10,000.
If the records were identical then eliminating dupes would be easy but
unfortunately it's quite complicated. There are quite a few tables in the
database.

Example: in one case, there is a duplicated contact where there is a newer
address for the same person in the parent, and in one of the child tables
there is some data in record 1 and some in record 2 which needs to be
reconciled.

At a base level, my instinct would be to find a way of displaying all the
data for both records (including all the tables) simultaneously so the user
could make a visual comparison, cut/paste what data they want to keep, and
then delete the extra record. Technically, I suppose one could create
"holding" fields for every field in all the tables and make a layout that
shows all the affected fields side by side with the "holding" equivalent and
create a script which would go to Record 2 and set the holding fields
appropriately so the data in both records could be seen at once, and then
the data for Record 1 could be modified as necessary.

Unwieldy to say the least.

It's made even more complicated when the client asks for a way to store the
old data. It seems to be that this could ultimately triple the size of the
database.

Is there a plug-in type of solution for something like this? Or should I
perhaps suggest to the client that the best way for them to do this would be
to run 2 copies of the database in 2 different versions of FileMaker (say,
8.5 and 9) running simultaneously on the same computer so they could just
look at the records in their natural tab layouts and could cut and paste to
reconcile the data?

Thanks,

Gary



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