Hi Sarah I don't know about finding an 80% match, but I use DigDB (www.digdb.com/) for a lot of spreadsheet work with Excel. It has a function to filter uniques - Go to Advanced Filter, Filter Uniques, then select the fields you want to match on. There are also functions to split fields by delimiter or number of characters, and a lot of other functions that I couldn't do without. It's not freeware - but you get a free 15 day trial. I suspect you will have to try a variety of methods to gradually sort out your duplicates as it sounds as if your data is not very consistent. You might need to work on separating key data out into different columns first. Good luck!
Kate Muirhead Collections Manager - Documentation Canterbury Museum Rolleston Avenue, Christchurch 8013 NEW ZEALAND Telephone 64 3 366 5000 Direct Dial 64 3 366 9429 extn 875 Facsimile 64 3 366 5622 Email kmuirhead at canterburymuseum.com www.canterburymuseum.com The contents of this email are confidential. If you have received this communication by mistake, please advise the sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments. The views expressed in this email are not necessarily the views of Canterbury Museum. -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of sarah johnson Sent: Saturday, 12 May 2007 7:37 a.m. Subject: [MCN-L] database sorting questions I recently became involved with a project attempting to sort through a rather large (50,000 or so) collection of multimedia assets (videotapes, audiotapes, cds, dvds), looking for duplicate copies. I would like to at least get a start on this programmatically, using the database they were recorded in (the database has been exported to an excel file). However, I am having some trouble coming up with a method to query and sort the data. Each piece was logged separately, with no mention of whether it was actually a clone or viewing copy of a previously entered piece. For the most part, all of the information on the label was typed into a single 'description' field. Runtimes and dates are both in separate fields, as is title (although the separate title field was somewhat rarely used). Unfortunately, the labels did not always read exactly alike even if the videos were, nor did the layout of the entries always match. Runtimes are also often off by a few seconds. I really need a method of automatically pulling up all assets with about an 80% match between fields. Is there a way to do this? Or am I approaching this problem all wrong? Any help at all would be greatly, greatly appreciated! Sarah Johnson sarah at dvs.com _________________________________________________________________ See what you're getting into...before you go there http://newlivehotmail.com/?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_viral_preview_050 7
