25Jul
How can I create an email list so that I don’t create duplicate addresses? (huge paper database needs help)
2 comments so farI have tons of email addresses on paper orderforms. I want to create a mailing list, but I don’t want to send duplicates, and I can’t screen the hundreds of pieces of paper to ensure I don’t enter one twice. Customer List help is needed!
Categories: Search Engine Optimization
Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Search Engine Optimization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Use Microsoft excel (prefer the latest version), it usually tries to auto complete the data if it finds a match in one of the prev cells, this way you can stop the entry and move on.
For a complex solution, you can build a small software using foxpro or vb to validate the first few letters of what you type againest any prev entry and suggest matches againest existing entries.
One easy way is to just type everything in, then you can SORT the list by the various fields to see if there are any duplications.
You want to set your fields so they can be easily sorted. Don’t just enter Name, Address, Phone, but set up as LastName: FirstName: Title: (Mr Ms Dr, etc) CompName: Address1, Address 2, Address 3. City: State: Zip: HomePhone: BusPhone: MobilePhone: etc.
Then once everything is entered, you can sort the entire list by the specific fields. For example, if you sort by ADDRESS1, it will show if there are 2 (or more) entries for a specific address number, and you can compare the entries and delete any redundancy. You can sort by Phone numbers or Lastnames, Company names, etc. to check for any duplication as well as typos, inconsistent entries, or missing data.