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How to Merge Duplicate Records in Dynamics 365 Business Central

Eliminating duplicate records in Dynamics 365 Business Central is vital to ensure your system runs smoothly and your sales staff can work quickly and efficiently.

There are a lot of users in your system, and many of them will create new customer, vendor, and contact cards. Records are also sometimes created automatically during a migration. Because of this, certain elements of these cards may either be entered twice or show up in two different records.

In Dynamics 365 Business Central, you can use the Merge Duplicate page from the card of a specific record and designate the one you want to keep. This page gives you an overview of duplicated field values and provides you with functions to select which values you want to keep or discard when merging two records into one.

In this blog, we will provide you with the steps on how to merge records to keep your system clean so it’s easy to navigate for your sales staff.

Before You Start – Prerequisites and Finding Duplicates

Prior to using this page, there are a couple of things users should know.

Prerequisite

The only prerequisite for using this feature is that the user must have the MERGE DUPLICATES permission set to use this functionality. Ensure you have users with this permission set and give it to those who will need to merge or delete duplicate records.

How to Find Duplicate Contacts

You can set up Business Central to automatically search for duplicate records each time you create a new contact or search manually after creating a contact.

Users can configure this on the Duplicates FastTab on the Marketing Setup page.

How Do You Merge Duplicate Records in Business Central?

When you find a duplicate or multiple duplicates, you can merge them by following these steps:

1. Choose the magnifying glass icon, enter Customers, and then choose the related link.
2. Select the customer that you know or suspect that a duplicate record exists for, and then choose the Edit action.
3. On the Customer Card page, choose the Merge With action.
4. On the Merge Duplicate page, in the Merge With field, select the customer that you believe is a duplicate of the one you have opened, indicated in the Current field.
   1. The Fields FastTab lists fields where the values are different for the two customers. This means that if the selected customer is really a duplicate, then only few fields should be listed, such as typing errors and other data entry mistakes.
   2. The Related Tables FastTab lists tables where there are fields with a relation to both customers. The Current Count and Duplicate Count fields show the number of fields in related tables where the No. value of both the current and the duplicate customer is used. On the Merge Duplicate page, this section is informational only, however, if merge conflicts exist, you'll resolve them on the Merge Duplicate Conflicts page. See steps 8 through 12.
5. For each field where you want to use another value than the current one, select the Override check box. The value in the Alternate Value field will then be transferred to the current record when you complete the process.
6. When you have finished selecting which values to keep or override, choose the Merge action.
   1. 1. The system checks if the merge of values for the duplicate customer into the current customer causes any conflicts. A conflict exists if a value in at least one primary-key field is the same for both customers while the value in the No field is different for the two customers.
7. If no conflicts are found, choose the Yes button in the confirmation message box.
   1. The duplicate customer is renamed so that all usage of its No. value in all fields with relations to the customer table will be replaced with the No. value of the current customer.
8. If conflicts exist, choose the Resolve (xx) conflicts before merging action on the Conflicts FastTab.
9. On the Merge Duplicate Conflicts page, select the line for a related table with a conflict, and then choose the View Details action.
   1. The Merge Duplicate page now shows the fields in the selected table that cause a merge conflict between the two customer records. Notice in both the summarized values in the Current and Conflicts With fields and on the lines that at least one primary-key field is the same for both customers and the value of the No. field is different for the two customers.
10. If you don't want to keep the duplicate customer record, choose the Remove Duplicate action, and then choose the Close button.
    1. Identical field values, other than the value in the No. field, are removed from the duplicate record and inserted on the current record.
11. If you want to keep the duplicate customer record after the merge, choose the Rename Duplicate.
12. On lines, not for the No. field, where the field has the same value on both records, change the value in the Alternate Value field and then choose the Close button.
    1. The conflicting field value is updated on the duplicate record so that it can be merged with the current record. The duplicate record continues to exist after the merge.
13. Repeat steps 8 through 12 until all conflicts are resolved. After, the Conflicts FastTab disappears.
14. On the Merge Duplicate page, choose the Merge action again, and then select the Yes button in the confirmation message box.

Want to Learn More Ways to Clean Up Your Business Central System?

Get in touch with Stoneridge! Our experts can help you use this tool, as well as identify and implement other features and processes to help make your system run more efficiently.

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