Hi, I'm having an issue trying to match up records I have in an Access table. Each time I append the data to the table, it creates duplicates. It doesn't match up correctly. Is there anyway to match up to stop duplicate values from happening? For example: if I have customer name, sale date and account number in one table and account number and address, city/state, and zip in another, and I want to merge these two tables, so only the address, city/state, and zip match up with the records for each, how would I would go about it? And it there is a way to automate it, so it can be on a regular basis? Thanks, Naomi

The recommendation for tables in Access is One Record for every...fill in the blank. So, one record for each customer. Having two tables for the customer data is not really proper structuring. I'd love to help you remedy this. How many records (ie unique) do you have in the Customer Table? Life's more painless for the brainless.

I have over 17,000 records in the customer table and 3,500 addresses that I need to match up with account numbers.

If the goal is to have all the data in one table, and your Customer Name is all one field (not recommended, but okay for now), make that the Primary Key. Then, create a relationship between that Customer name field, and make it a Foreign Key in the second table. Then, create an append query to append the data from the second table into the first. Just search for "Create an append query" in Access Help. That will walk you through how to do it properly. If all you want to do is create a form or report with the information, rather than combining the tables, then you can create a query and base the form or report on the results of that query. Life's more painless for the brainless.