# Miscellaneous > General Database Discussions >  Need help with Database Merging

## ccshaw

I'm fairly new to databases, and was hired by a small company to get them set up with a CRM.

Long story short, they have multiple sets of data that all need to be consolidated into one giant, accuruate, and clean set of records.

The trouble is, there is a lot of overlap in the data, and certain fields have only been kept up-to-date in certain databases. For example, if there was a given record that was stored in several of the databases, and it needed to be updated with a new address, it would only be updated in _one_ of the databases.

And I use the term 'databases' here very loosely, currently we have 3 or 4 very large excel files (2,000+ records), and a Microsoft Outlook data file.

So, my question is: What is the best way to consolidate these various files? I have to be able to give one database the priority in a given field, but a different database priority in something else. (for example, if Excel file A, and excel file B, both have information on the same customer, but the address and phone number don't match, use the Address from Excel file A, but use the phone number from Excel File B.)

And also, what program would you recommend for this task? My employer is willing to purchase Access, but wants to make sure its going to be able to do it first.

Thanks in Advance,
Cameron

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## J013

If your employer is serious about having an CRM application, then I would suggest you going with a proper RDBMS and designing your solution against that. If you go with something like MS SQL, then you can create databases representing each of the Excel files and create packages to import the Excel data over easily into multiple databases. Once the data is in databases, you can use queries to compare data with SQL statements much easier than you would be able to do manually. Once you have identified your primary data and have a normalized database schema designed, you can create SSIS packages to import the data you need into your new solution.

That is just my two cents.

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## rmiao

By the way, express edition of ms sql is free.

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