I am hoping someone has discovered something I have not yet with regard to constituent maintenance.  I will provide a specific scenario, below, and I would love to learn how others would tackle it.  This scenario is a specific one, but I have many each month that are very similar.

We have kiosks for visitors to provide their e-mail address and communication content preferences.  I am given an Excel file of the entries once a month, and there are currently about 800 of them.  From this file, I need to determine if each individual: 

• a) already exists in RE (add them);
• b) is already in RE, and the information they provided is the same as what we have (no change needed); or,
• c) is already in RE, but they provided new or different information than what we have (requiring update). 

I just have not come up with a way that doesn't require hours and hours of manual effort and would appreciate anyone's input!  Thanks very much.

Ann

I can think of several different things depending on what you get on the spreadsheet and how many records (individuals not deceased) do you have in your database.  Can you give me an idea of what is included in the spreadsheet

Helen E Weed

Columbia College SC

Our database contains approximately 70,000 records.  The kiosk file included 800 records, and the fields included were:  ID (chronological # assigned by the program), Date, Name, Address, and columns representing 9 different check boxes for the individual to mark which topics they were interested in receiving communication about.

The program was written as a very simple method of collecting data without any language to de-dupe, check against existing records, etc.

Ann

Email me at heweed@columbiasc.edu and I will send you a brief document that might help

Helen