Clearing up data

[sthapa]

Hi all

Im not sure what is the best way to go about this.

I have a table with 8000 records and on one of the fields the department name is wrong. eg should be "Marketing", but some records have the name "Marke" or "Marketi"

Is there an easy way to update this field to add on the missing characters ?

Thanks in advance

 

[GrahamT]

Hi all

Im not sure what is the best way to go about this.

I have a table with 8000 records and on one of the fields the department name is wrong. eg should be "Marketing", but some records have the name "Marke" or "Marketi"

Is there an easy way to update this field to add on the missing characters ?

Thanks in advance

One of the benefits of using a relational database is that you are able to enter stuff like Department Name only once in a lookup table. All occurrances of it are therefore spelled the same, and if the name needs editing it is done only once!

In your problem, I suggest you create an update query and select the records containing the fields to be corrected by using the LIKE operator - refer to the built-in help for instructions.

Once you have made the corrections, may I suggest you try normalising the database - for instance by adding a lookup table for Department Name (& I suspect there are other fields that could also be included in the lookup table).

The built-in help within Access is an excellent resource for finding out how to do most things - just find the time to browse through it & also experiment (not on live data, though! ).