Query Qualities: Duplicates in Query

Unless Jamie Madrox is one of your constituents, duplicates in your query results are never a welcome sight. A record can appear multiple times in your query results for two reasons: either the record meets the query criteria multiple times, or the query output includes one or more one-to-many fields.

The important thing to keep in mind is that while it may look like a record is included multiple times in your query, it is not the case. When you save the query and use it in an export, report, or mailing, each record is included only once.

Even though these duplicate records aren't actually inflating the number of records in your query, they're still pretty ugly to look at. If you have records that meet the query criteria multiple times, you can usually remove them by selecting Tools, Query Options from the menu bar, then going to the Record Processing tab, and marking the Suppress duplicate rows checkbox.

If this doesn't remove all duplicates, it means that you have one or more one-to-many fields in your query output. In The Raiser's Edge, fields are either one-to-one or one-to-many. First Name is a one-to-one field, because a constituent can only have one first name. Constituency Code and Phone Number are examples of one-to-many fields because each constituent can have multiple values for those fields.

To get rid of duplicate records altogether, remove all one-to-many fields from your query output. For more information on duplicates in Query, check out Knowledgebase solution BB61118.