Merge Records to Save Data before Deleting Duplicate Records

Did you know you can Merge records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and CRM Online? This is handy for eliminating duplicate records while retaining their data.

Duplicate records can arise in your database when different users create new records independently. Duplicate records aren’t necessarily identical. For example, two Contact records might have the same first and last name, but one record might contain a phone number not found in the other. Instead of arbitrarily deleting one of the duplicate records and potentially losing any non-overlapping data, you can use the Merge function. This tool consolidates the data from two records of the same type into one record. It works for records of the type Account, Contact, or Lead. We’ll demonstrate the process below.

This task can be performed with privileges found in all default Security Roles in CRM Online.

The first step is to locate the records you wish to merge. In this example, we’ll use two sample Contact records with the same name.

Navigate to Workplace > Customers > Contacts (see below), and select the records you wish to merge by checking their boxes. Then click Merge in the ribbon.

The Merge Records dialog opens (see below). Select the Master Record. The master record is the one that will retain the field values selected from both records. The (unselected) subordinate record is the one that will be deactivated. When you select the master record, all its fields are automatically selected. Now select any fields from the subordinate record (not the master record) you want to retain instead. Notice that the master record in this example does not have any address data, so we have chosen those fields from the subordinate record instead. Once you have identified all of the data you wish to keep, click OK to merge the records.

After the records are merged, a message appears (see below). Just to clarify, the subordinate record is only deactivated, not deleted. Click OK.

Let’s see what happened to the subordinate record. Open it (see below) and you’ll see a highlighted notification including a link to the master record. At the bottom, you can also see that the record Status is set to Inactive.

The Merge functionality is a useful tool that helps keep your CRM Online database organized and prevents important data from being lost. If you would like to learn about additional functions, you might be interested in our xRM.com CRM Online training. If you are an xRM.com customer, we invite you to join the Success Portal by xRM.com, which provides free tutorial videos on CRM Online and other applications. For more information, we invite you to contact xRM.com.