Data Clean Up

Lanetta Gilder

Hello!
I hope all is well. Summertime is data clean up time! LOL! The cleanup projects I’d like to tackle is addressees/salutations and cleaning up multiple addresses on the address tab. What is the best way to tackle these two projects? One by one (one record at a time) or via import/export? The database is not large (approximately 20,000 records). Looking forward to your suggestions. Thanks in advance. Take care and have a good day!

 

Regena Weddle 2

When I am cleaning up addressees/salutations, I usually start with a query and export all the salutations and the spouse ID, name and salutations.  That way I can clean up and concatenate large groups of data at the same time (Mr. and Mrs., etc.).  I also make sure the combined salutations for both spouses are the same on the spreadsheet.  Then once I get the data the way I want it, I create a spreadsheet to import into RE using import.  If the spouses have records to change, I can create rows for their data as well.  You may only have 20,000 records, but if your database is like ours, we have 8 salutations per record, so that could amount to 160k changes.  I end up with 5 columns on the import spreadsheet - ID, Addressee Type, Addressee Text, Sequence Number, Editable.  If I want to add all 8 salutations, I could have 8 rows per person, so it all imports at the same time.  Hope this makes sense, but it is way faster than individually keying the corrections.

Anne Herbert

Since Addressee/Salutations are stored as a number behind the scenes it is best to go to the addressee/salutation table and right click on it to print out the value that goes with each addressee salutation.  This table shows the formatting for these as well (e.g. title first name middle last name, etc.)


I also export out all the name information and spouse name information (first, middle, last, nickname, suffix, titles) but I don't import those back in.  I import in the number for the Addr/Sal based on what is in the table.  The advantage of using the number is that when someone updates that person's record and adds a middle name or a nickname it will automatically update the Addr/Sal.  If you import these with a type of editable then your data entry people have to remember to fix the addr/sal every time they update a record vs. having it happen automatically when the value is changed.

Karen Hartt

We recently went through an addressee/salutation project. We wanted to add informal addressee and salutations to all donor records, about 20,000 records. I set up default sets for the informal individual and informal couple to speed up the process. It took two people about 3 months to complete. As we add new folks either individually or through batch we just use the default set and it loads the formal and informal addressee and salutations.


As for addresses - I'd tackle those individually to review all addresses, correct missing links and delete duplicates. I'd also run an Address Finder after the cleanup.


 

Karen Stuhlfeier

If you need to make changes or additions to a lot of records use import. You can import new addressee and salutation types more easily that way.