#Mailing list managment
7 messages in this thread
Is there any utility I can use to compare mailing lists for duplicate
names. Some of the lists I have are long and aren't in alphabetical order which
makes it difficult to do by manualy. It seems like something a computer should
be able to do.
Barry
What is your mailing list program or format or… more details please
regards, Lu on AutoPilot downunder
Lu,
The mailing lists are Amiga WordPerfect files or Amiga text files. If
there is specific software that will do what I'm looking for, there will have
to be a utility for converting from text files.
Barry
Barry,
I'm not sure whether I'm losing track of the discussion, most DBases
and spreadsheets I know will pick up and deliver text files as a part of
the program. I have seen pd clone <=> Amiga text converters but Ihaven't
had the need to use them since whatever I've transferred has worked
anyway.
regards, Lu on AutoPilot downunder
Lu,
Maybe I'm not making myself clear. I'm not having problems transferring
mailing lists between platforms. I'm only using Amiga files. My problem is that
I have multiple _files_ (I do NOT want to merge the files either). These files
are in the form of mailing lists (text or word processor format. Again let me
emphasize that I'm not having problems converting the files-I can open a .txt
file in Word Perfect no problem, or convert a .wp file to .txt with no
problem).
The problem is that there is duplicate _information_ within the files. In
other words, "AAA advertising" is listed in the mailing list for Ad Agencies,
Public Relations firms, and Video Production firms. The one name appears on 3
different mailing lists. When I send out mailing packages, "AAA advertising"
ends up getting three packages. Remember, this is a simplification, if I had
only had 3 lists, and only a few names on each list, checking for duplicates
would be easy. I however, have a dozen lists, with thousands of names. Manually
checking and removing duplicates is impossible.
I need software to do this for me. I don't think a word processor
or data base program can do this. (If it can, I'd be grateful for any
information on how to do this). What I need, is software that I can
say, "look at mailing list "SFadAgencies1.txt" and compare it to
mailing list "BayAreaAdAgen2.txt" and flag any duplicates". The
software would have to know what a mailing list was, and know that it
had to compare groups of 4 fields with other groups of 4 (or 3)
fields-and mark any duplicates. Right now, I don't know of any
software that can do this. But I'm thinking that some _has_ to exist
somewhere. Duplicate (and triplicate) mailings are expensive.
Barry
Barry,
well, in SQL you would just do a
SELECT Adr1, Adr2, …
FROM AdAgencies
UNION
SELECT Adr1, Adr2, …
FROM PubRel
UNION
SELECT Adr1, Adr2, …
FROM VideoProd
which would select all relevant fields and automatically drop all
duplicates. They would have to be identical, of course… As of now Oxxi
have not (yet?) implemented SQL as a feature in SB
I just had a quick look at my SB4Pro (v1.20) manuals for what they DO have
but couldn't find anything appropriate, but then it's not exactly the
lastest version and it was really just a quick browse through the
indexes…
// Chris coming in from Germany
\X/ on AutoPilot 1.061……….
Oh. I see what you mean. I did write a program once similar to that which
looked for matching pairs of first numbers in a group annd carried out
operations on the other fields if a match as found but I haven't written
anything for the Amiga yet.
Umm, there is a program (probably more than one) called diff (I think)
which looks for differences in files maybe you could prevail on the author
of that to modify it to combine the diffs into a separate temp file for
your mailing list.
regards, Lu on AutoPilot downunder