Combining Records

[gomikem]

I'm modifying a database for someone in our marketing department. The DB tracks shirts that are given to employees.

The area I'm having a problem with has to do with the shirt style.

The current categories offer:

Long Sleeve (White)
Long Sleeve (Black)

etc..

I want to combine those two so they fall under the simple category "Long Sleeve"

The problem I'm having is that when I do a find/replace, it will allow me to change all of the Long Sleeve (White) to Long Sleeve, but then when I go to change Long Sleeve (Black) to "Long Sleeve", it creates duplicate entries because the same order contained x amount of Long Sleeve (White) and x amount of Long Sleeve (Black).

Is there an easy/ automated way to combine these results into "Long Sleeve" and add the quantity fields together to show the total amount of shirts ordered?

 

[KeithG]

It sounds like you data is not normalized.

 

[gomikem]

I'm pretty new, but what do you mean by normalized?

 

[neileg]

You really need to split the field into two fields for sleeve length and colour, Long Sleeve and white, and Long Sleeve and black. This way you can identify all the long sleeves, but still distinguish between black and white.