Sugar Community Edition Documentation

Sugar Community Edition 5.2 Documentation

Sugar Community Edition User Guide

Version 5.2

Chapter 2 Navigating the User Interface : Merging Duplicate Records

Merging Duplicate Records

You can merge duplicate records into a single record to update and clean up your data. You can select which fields you want to merge and when the process completes, the system deletes the duplicate records. This ensures that there is no confusion and that your users are accessing information from only one source. Before the duplicate records are deleted, related information such as activities, history, contacts are moved from the duplicate records to the primary record.

You can merge duplicate records in the following modules: Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Cases, and Bugs.

If you already know of the duplicate records that you want to merge, you can do so from the module’s list view. If you need to search for duplicates of a record and then merge them, you can do it from the record’s detail view.

To merge duplicate records from the list view

1.	On the module’s home page, select two or more duplicate records and click the Merge Duplicates link. Alternatively, on the detail page of a record, click Find Duplicates.

The Merge Records page displays fields from primary record on the left and fields from the duplicate records on the right. The system highlights primary record fields that have different values from the duplicate records.

Note:

The system treats the first record that you select as the primary record but you can change to a different record.

The system uses a line to demarcate fields that have different data from the fields that have identical data. Fields that have differing data display above the line.

a.	To specify one of the duplicate records as the primary record, click Set as Primary above the duplicate field.

The system moves that record to the left.

b.	To replace a field in the primary record with a field from a secondary record, use the << button.

2.	Click Save Merge.

The system merges the selected fields, moves all the related information to the primary record, and deletes the duplicate records.

To merge duplicates from the detail view

1.	From the List View, click a record to see its Detail View.

2.	Click Find Duplicates.

The first step of finding duplicates display on the screen. You will have to set filters to specify the field that you want to search for. For example, you can search for records that have the same billing address or phone number.