Dear forum fellows,

Does any one of you know of a tool (Excel VBA or otherwise) to merge
databases in the form of textfiles (.csv or .txt) ?
What I want (and will create if it does not exist) is a tool to merge
contact lists (name/address/phone/email etc.) of different formats into
some uniform (or flexible) format and output the merged files in any
format of any of the input files.
The matter is that I have contact info in my phone, in Outlook Express,
in Gmail, on Skype, on the website of my mobile phone provider and in
some obscure files somewhere on my computer.
I want to export and merge all these files into one file and output it
in one or more of the original input formats and import them again.
The program should be able to recognise and match identical contacts on
the base of name or address (fuzzy), phone number or email address
(exact) and a way to manually control merging in case of doubt.
It should be able to split information into the smallest bits (like
addresses into street, number, postal code, city, state)
A kind of record description must be supplied that maps fields of the
original file to the intermediate or output file.

I can not imagine that I am the only person in the world that wants a
tool like this and hardly that nothing like this doesn't exist already.
Yet I did not find anything like it on the web.

Anybody has a clue where to find a tool like this or created something
oneself?
If not, anybody interested in cooperating, supplying parts, functions,
bits, smart ideas, information?

Much obliged,

Lex

Do all the contacts have last-modified dates?
Without that it's going to be tricky to know which one of a bunch of the "same" contacts is the most recent.

Tim

"lexcel" wrote in message ups.com...
Dear forum fellows,

Does any one of you know of a tool (Excel VBA or otherwise) to merge
databases in the form of textfiles (.csv or .txt) ?
What I want (and will create if it does not exist) is a tool to merge
contact lists (name/address/phone/email etc.) of different formats into
some uniform (or flexible) format and output the merged files in any
format of any of the input files.
The matter is that I have contact info in my phone, in Outlook Express,
in Gmail, on Skype, on the website of my mobile phone provider and in
some obscure files somewhere on my computer.
I want to export and merge all these files into one file and output it
in one or more of the original input formats and import them again.
The program should be able to recognise and match identical contacts on
the base of name or address (fuzzy), phone number or email address
(exact) and a way to manually control merging in case of doubt.
It should be able to split information into the smallest bits (like
addresses into street, number, postal code, city, state)
A kind of record description must be supplied that maps fields of the
original file to the intermediate or output file.

I can not imagine that I am the only person in the world that wants a
tool like this and hardly that nothing like this doesn't exist already.
Yet I did not find anything like it on the web.

Anybody has a clue where to find a tool like this or created something
oneself?
If not, anybody interested in cooperating, supplying parts, functions,
bits, smart ideas, information?

Much obliged,

Lex