Avoiding Duplicates

[Dana G]

I'm going to ask a question that I know will cause most of you to cringe. Please don't kill the messenger because believe me I have tried to get my point across regarding primary keys.

My company saves contact information based on a First Name + Last Name calculation. We have been doing it this way for 10 + years and it works pretty well for us. Like I said I tried to change their minds but at this point its hopeless.

The first name, last name (lets just say NAME) calculation is used to set up relationships to pull in the address, phone, fax etc. data to other layouts.

So my question...Is there a way to also make a calculation result be unique? Like when other text fields are set up there is an option for it to be "not empty", "unique", etc. It would be helpful for a custom message to pop up and say, for example: "Contact information for Jeff Allen already exists." Then display the record. From that point the user could decide that this is the person they are looking for or it is not and could create a new record.

Like I said - I'm sure some of you just cringed at the fact that we have taken technology way back.

For all of the other who aren't laughing at our methods...help would be appreciated. :

[SlimJim]

As the calculation will occur at data entry you could use an auto-enter calculation instead of a calculation and then validate the Name field as a text field.

EDIT - or even use an extra field with auto-enter calculation simply as a means of validating the calculation.

Edited October 14, 2005 by Guest

[Dana G]

Thanks SlimJim!

For some reason my mind blocks out that I can create an auto-enter calc.