How to know if it's a duplicate record or not.

[Imee_Lee]

We are currently using dedupe to identify duplicates in our records.
Since our records is growing, we need to do it in automated way everytime there's a new record coming in.

Here's the scenario:

When a new property address will be added, there should be an automation that will automatically check the current records that we had, and it will tag this new property address if it's a duplicate or not.

We just want to have an accurate solution if there's a new entry coming in, it will automatically mark or tag as duplicate.

You can just imagine a Google Spreadsheet, if there's a duplicate it will suddenly highlight the column with duplicates.

Do you think it's possible?

[ScottWorld]

There are many different ways to check for duplicate records in your system.

1. The first way is to do what you suggested on your post: Whenever a new record is submitted into your system from a form, you could have an automation that searches for a matching record in your system, and then flags the brand new record if other matching records were found.

2. You can manually run Airtable’s DeDupe extension to search for and merge duplicates.

3. There is also another trick using linked record fields that can let you know if you currently have duplicates in your existing records that are already in your system. I demonstrate this DeDupe trick on this Airtable podcast episode.

4. And, if you want to have an automation that regularly deletes or merges your duplicated records for you automatically, I would highly recommend using Make’s automations and integrations for Airtable to do this.

If you’ve never used Make before, I’ve assembled a bunch of Make training resources in this thread: https://air.tableforums.com/t/make-com-basic-navigation-tips/277

For example, here is how you would instantly trigger a Make automation from Airtable.

I also give live demonstrations of how to use Make in many of my Airtable podcast appearances here:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqssva4liHRwHhQIpTXekG8WObEoyC2F1

p.s. If your company has a budget for your project and you’d like to hire an expert Airtable consultant to help you with any of this, please feel free to contact me through my website: Airtable consulting — ScottWorld 

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hi Imee!  Yeap, you could set up an automation that'll trigger whenever a new record gets created, and it'll look in your table for any records with the same address.  If it finds any records with the same address it'll tag the triggering record as a duplicate, and your automation would look something like this:

Link to base

[Imee_Lee]

Hello, @TheTimeSavingCo thank you for this, but when I tried setting it up based on your linked base.
It would tag all of the recorded entries as duplicates even if it's not.
Here's a short recording for you to show.

Thank you.

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Ah you're right, so sorry, it's missing a condition where it checks whether the record ID is the same.  I've updated the automation in the linked table and it should work now: