How to merge duplicate records

Duplicate records creep into every database: someone registers with a new email, or the same person arrives via an import and a registration. Merging tidies them into one record without losing anything important.

Merging duplicates

1. Log in to your web office, open the Members tab and select the ‘Merge duplicate user accounts’ task.
2. Choose your approach: create a batch, where the system generates a list of likely duplicates across your site, or manually merge two records you’ve already identified.
3. Decide which login name survives. In a batch there’s a ‘Login Name:’ dropdown offering ‘Most Recently Used’ (the default), ‘Oldest’ and ‘Newest’. In a manual merge you type the login name you want to keep, and Hubb checks it isn’t already in use.
4. In a batch, the system flags any warnings and conflicts it finds. You can remove those rows from the batch, or switch them to a manual merge where you choose which of the conflicting details to keep.
5. Confirm the merge. Everything from the removed record moves into the kept one, except where the kept record already has that information: if both have an email address, the kept record’s wins.

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Good to know

• You can’t merge a record that has higher permissions than your own. That’s deliberate: it stops someone creating an account and merging it with an administrator’s to inherit their access. If you hit this, someone with greater permissions needs to do the merge.
• The default in a batch is to keep the most recently used login name, which is usually the one the person actually remembers. If you override it, or type a different one in a manual merge, tell them what their login is now, and ask them to use the password that went with it.
• The best merge is the one you never do: when approving registrations, the duplicates box lets you match an application to an existing record before a second one is ever created.