Hi Dave, Here's what I feel is the simplest solution using only Notepad or a similar simple text editor. If all of yor data is in a simple text file, then all you'd have to do is go to a line containing any phone number, and alter the number in any way which seems convenient in order to make it unique. For example, if the phone number was: (123) 456-7890 Then you could alter it like this: (123)a456-7890 What I did was to replace the space in the phone number with a lower-case letter a. Then, using the Replace feature of the text editor, as Notepad has, in the Find field place the phone number in the form in which it was originally written, that is, with the space between the area code and the phone number. You would then tab to the Replace with field, and ensure that it is blank. Finally, tab over to the Replace All button, and, presto, all the duplicates of that phone number would be removed. You would then repeat these steps with each unique phone number in order to remove the duplicates. After all the duplicates for each phone number have been removed, you could then do another Replace, and, using the example above, you could replace the characters: )a that is, a right parenthesis followed by the lower-case a with the characters: ) that is, a right parenthesis followed by a space, in order to put all of the phone numbers back into their original form.
Admittedly, this is a manual method, but, if the job isn't too big, it wouldn't take that long. It also has the advantage of allowing you to monitor your data in great detail, rather than relying on an algorithm which can sometimes make you lose data. Good luck, Rod --Original Message----- From: Talk [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dave via Talk Sent: Tuesday, December 6, 2016 10:29 AM To: A I Squared Support <[email protected]> Subject: Finding all Duplicates II Good Morning, Thanks for the several suggestions. Here's a bit more on what I am doing: The Company's Voice Mail has been acting up for a couple of months now. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And lately, it hasn't. So when customers call in, if all Customer Service people are busy, the caller should go to voice mail. Well, they don't. they just go away. The phone system does record all numbers calling in, so there is a list of phone numbers. But we have no way of knowing the name of the customer calling, just their number. And some people call every day, or multiple times per day. So in the record there are going to be duplicates. -- And the crazy thing is that there is no way that anyone knows, as how to get this list of numbers out of the Phone Systems records. Now, I am sure there is a file some where on the systems storage, but those who know something about the phone system have no idea where that file would be, or what it would be called. So, the Boss has someone reading me these phone numbers out of the phone system. I then have been typing them out in a Document, as in a long list. Just by hearing the numbers, I can tell when I hear a duplicate number, but this is not fool proof. So I have these phone numbers, in a Word File. Hundreds of phone numbers, and I am to remove the duplicates, because the Boss intends for Customer Service to call all of these numbers back. The Company already looks like idiots since customers are not getting called back, and then to have the poor souls in Customer Service call a customer twice, three times or more, isn't going to look great either. So, I and another have been tasked with getting all of these numbers into a file, to be given to customer service, and with no duplicates. <Smile> Welcome to the Real World when it comes to problem solving. Butch's Sorting in DOS sounds like a possible solution. I can save my document as a Text file. I'll give this a try. Since I have hundreds of numbers to weed through, I was trying to use the power of the computer to strip out the duplicates, rather than having me and this other person go through them one at a time and hoping to remove all duplicates. So thought I would ask the list here, since we have some smart folks here. Grumpy Dave _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/rod_hutton%40hotmail.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com _______________________________________________ Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ai Squared. For membership options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/options.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com/archive%40mail-archive.com. For subscription options, visit http://lists.window-eyes.com/listinfo.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com List archives can be found at http://lists.window-eyes.com/private.cgi/talk-window-eyes.com
