Best way to search for similar records

[Montez659]

I am thinking through a db design in my head and one portion has got me a little stumped. The db is an attendance db with an export to an attendance sheet in xl that can be imported back in to access to update the info. My problem comes from if the leader of one of these groups adds a name to the role (which could happen frequently) that name may already exist in tblContacts in the db, but the contactID would not be recorded on the xl sheet (If I exported it, the contactID exists hidden, if they do it, no ID).

Some of this I outlined in a previous post, but I have a different question now. What I am wanting to do is find the best way to find similar records. Keyword is similar, because if someone enters an incorrect spelling of something (be it, first or last name, email or phone) I wouldn't want to create a new record.

I have been researching the Joining of the tables to return unique records, but I guess my questions are do these records need to be a perfect match to show as unique (every field 100% match) and is this a situation where Like would come into play?

 

[Norie]

Why is the ID hidden? Even if it is why can't you use it?

 

[Montez659]

Well, the ID is hidden because that is the PK for tblContacts and if the user of the spreadhseet were to try to add one of their own (or unknowingly change an exisiting), who knows what kind of havoc that could do as the record PK would no longer match up with what was imported.

And I may not have been clear as to why I can't use the ID. If someone adds a name to the spreadsheet, there will be no ID attached to that name. So on import, the data dumps into a temporary table to search against tblContacts to see if (for any record without a contactID) if that contact exists already.

I think that I have the basic premise down for the query. I used the Like function on fName, lName, email and phone to return suspected duplicates. I used Access design view then switched to SQL view and changed the AND's to OR's and all seems to work well.

I may have another question, but I think it is a different topic related to this project and I might have an idea of how to do it.