How I Escaped Database Hell!

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(How an old 1996 database version kicked the tail endof ...
Access ... ...
is it that I feel like I've been to hell and back?If you email your ... or ...
or if you kno (How an old 1996 database version kicked the tail endof Microsoft Access 2000!)Dear Reader,Why is it that I feel like I've been to hell and back?If you email your prospects or customers, or if you know youshould but don't, hopefully my experience will be of valueto you.Does any of this sound familiar?I had a list of names and email addresses I desperatelyneeded to send emails to. These were people who signedup to resell my product, "The Amazing Formula That SellsProducts Like Crazy."I had a ton of duplicates in my list.
For some reason,people sign up multiple times. Yet, I only wanted to sendthem one email.Emailing your list of associates, customers and prospectsis absolutely essential.
I felt humiliated that a stupiddatabase problem was preventing me from contacting myassociates on a regular basis.My list was in this format:12234 firstname lastname emailThe data was listed on a password protected web page. Itried to copy and paste the list into Excel, so I couldmanipulate it, but that wouldn't work.
It wouldn't separatethe data into columns.I tried Boxer 99, an ultra-cool text editor with remove duplicate liens feature.But it wouldn't remove the duplicates because the firstnumber on each record was different. But the name andemail were the same.
To Boxer 99, it wasn't a duplicaterecord.My email program is supposed to remove duplicate records.For some reason I still don't understand, it wouldn'tzap the records for me.EEEEK!Feeling exasperated, I decided to "get tough" and importthe names into Access. Surely the heavy duty databaseprograms would pull through for me and end my misery andhumiliation! Have you ever tried to remove duplicates in Microsoft Access?Oh my gosh.
Don't even try unless you're a professional!I used a "find duplicates" query to locate the duplicates.But how do you remove them from your list?Whew! What a nightmare. I never did figure it out.I tried to follow the 15 steps in the on-line help file, orhowever many there were.But it didn't work.You'd think there would be a button to click on that says,"remove duplicate records," right? It isn't exactly anunusual or exotic procedure.Anyway, I hunted all over and tried out some other emailprograms, figuring that one of them surely would import thedata in a format that would allow me to de-dupe the list.But nothing would work.
I tried exporting the list out ofAccess and then importing it into my email program.Ugggghhhh!Finally, a friend of mine said, "Hey, why don't you tryLotus Approach? You can do what you want in only one click!" I tried to buy Lotus Approach at their web site. But ifI remember correctly, I couldn't download it.
You had towait for the CD!What are they thinking? It's called downloading. Hello!Anyway, thank God I had an old 1996 version on CD.
I wasn'tconfident I could install it since I probably didn't havethe unlock code.Thankfully, Lotus didn't require multiple unlock codes likea lot of software does today. And it wasn't an upgradeversion that required you to hunt down the original versionyou bought back in the dark ages!Like you can ever find the original version before the 3upgrades you bought.
You know what I'm talking about? To continue, I fired it up and the names imported likea champ. About 10 times easier than Microsoft Access,I might add.To de-dupe the list, all I had to do was select "Find uniqueor distinct records."In an instant my list was de-duped and ready for mailing!Holy smokes!Could it be that a database actually made something easy?What a relief.
Next, I needed to export the list so Icould pull it into an email program.I needed the list in pipe delimited format separated bypipes that look like this: |In database lingo, that's called a pipe.Guess what?It took only an instant in Approach. Again, I found it100 times easier than Access.
But I don't want to blameAccess. I had downloaded some other databases from the Netwhose names I won't mention.They were no easier to use for this simple task than Accesswas.
Finally, I talked to a friend of mine who is a techno whiz.He uses Q & A because he had problems using Access also. Hemakes lots of queries to Access to find customers who boughtproducts one and two, or who bought within the last 60 daysand so forth.He got quotes from database experts about making thesequeries and they told him how complicated it would be.He does it in a flash with Q & A.
I'm told that databaseisn't even marketed any longer. So I'm headed down to myused bookstore to see if they have an old copy.And I'm also checking out query procedures in Approach.Interestingly enough, though, when I asked my friend ifit was easy to de-dupe records in Q & A, he said he didn'tknow of a way to do it.So there you have it.
Now, I only have a few more windmills left to joust. Forexample, my list of associates isn't clean.Some of the email addresses are in the name field! Oh boy,have you ever tried to move data from one field to the next?You'd think you could select the cell, and drag the data toanother cell.Logical right?Answer? Guess again bucko! Here's another, know all those ding dongs who type their names in capital letters? So whenyou suck their names into your database, it's in all caps?Then you send them email, their name is naturally in caps,and they email you back nasty things blaming you forscreaming at them?Of course, only after complaining to your ISP that youspammed them and the capital letters are proof you're anovice who doesn't know yet that spamming is a no-no.Well get this: In Q & A, you can hit a button and put allrecords in a column into caps and lower case.Sure would be cool if you could do that in Approach orAccess.
You'd think there would be an email program thatwould also do this for you.I mean, this being the age of email and all...Hey, for all you database gurus out there, I've put up alittle discussion board you can visit and share your wisdomwith the rest of us database hacks.And don't spam it with mlm ads or I'm putting YOUR emailaddress in all caps, firing up my old database program,exportin' your name in pipe delimited and zippin' a nastynote off to your ISP about how the caps prove you're anovice spammer who doesn't even know caps mean screaming!:)The board is at:http://www.higherresponse.com/members/wwwboard/data.html Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .