Re: Check For Dupes In FLat DB Before Adding

[pileofrogs]

Is there only one 'email' record per file and you're working on multiple files, or are there multiple records in one file that might or might not contain an email field?

[lisaw]

Hi! There are multiple records on one file that has the email address and name. I just need to check to see if there are duplicate emails only.

[pileofrogs]

Okay, to further refine my understanding of your question:

You say you're trying to eliminate duplicate emails. You also say you're trying to add email in places where there isn't one before. Those sound like two different things.

When you say duplicate emails, do you mean that no 2 records should have the same email? Or do you mean that no record should have 2 emails?

When you're adding an email to records that don't already have one, are you adding the same email over and over (causing duplicates) or do you have a list of emails to add?

Maybe it would be easiest if you posted a chunk of your flat file DB as a 'before' and 'after', with the 'after' section manually fixed.

-Pileofrogs

[lisaw]

Hi pileofrogs, What I'm trying to do is the following...allow users to add themselves to a flat database which looks like this(split with an "=" sign):

[e-mail]=users name 1
[e-mail]=users name 2
[e-mail]=users name 3
[e-mail]=users name 4

If a user tries to add themselves, using an email address that already exists in the database, then they are told to use a different email....If the email doesn't exist in the database then the email and name are added.