Questions about Dedup feature, and some suggestions

[tbessie]

I just noticed the new Dedup feature.

I was wondering - are all duplicates logged in an obvious place, so I can see what work was done? If it doesn't, it should.

Besides that, I think a couple features could make this even better...

1. Add a "simulated dedup" checkbox; this would do everything dedup WOULD do, but wouldn't do it - that way, a user could check to see if a dedup would remove stuff that shouldn't be removed, so they can avoid mistakes. What it WOULD do would be logged for the user, so they can inspect it.

2. For the dedup method, you should add "keep newest modified"; in general, if there are duplicates, I'd want to keep the NEWEST one, not the oldest one. Any reason that wasn't included in the dedup methods?

- Tim

[DJOCTO]

Tim,

Thanks. The Keep latest option should be under Advanced settings.

It makes a list of all records. This is in your c:\users\<username>\appdata\companionlink folder. Look for a Txt file in Excel format. It makes this when you choose Dedupe, and before it reports how many dupes it finds. Currently the dedupe system does not have a selection mode, it's all or nothing based on the oldest or newest selection.

[tbessie]

Tim,

Thanks. The Keep latest option should be under Advanced settings.

It makes a list of all records. This is in your c:\users\<username>\appdata\companionlink folder. Look for a Txt file in Excel format. It makes this when you choose Dedupe, and before it reports how many dupes it finds. Currently the dedupe system does not have a selection mode, it's all or nothing based on the oldest or newest selection.

Thanks for the explanation - I'll play some more with it to see how it works.

So, if I tell it to dedupe, it will create that list, but then prompt me to actually go ahead and do it, so I'll have time to look at the list before deciding if I actually want to proceed, then?

- Tim

[DJOCTO]

Yes. It will give you a count of how many dupes it found.

[tbessie]

By the way, "Keep Latest" isn't an option in Advanced. "Keep First Found" is - that doesn't sound like "latest"... sounds like whatever the first one it found in whatever order it happened to read them, which could be random, oldest to newest, newest to oldest, etc.

What does "Keep First Found" mean?

Also, I just ran dedupe - it gave me some stats (there was nothing to dedupe), but I didn't see anything asking me if I "really wanted to dedupe" after that dialog. If it HAD found some duplicate records, would it then have asked me?

I didn't see any text file with that info in it, tho' I did see "recordchanges.log". Not sure what that is.

- Tim