Text (Manual Merge):

E.g. ‘Address’

When a text field has been given a type of Text (Manual Merge) then when both the master and slave text fields have different values the slave will be highlighted red to show data will be lost and manual editing is required (such as pressing the ‘Copy Over’ button).

In this example you can see which data will be lost because of conflicting data.  By pressing the  copy over button you will overwrite the master record text with the slave value and end up with the following (where the data no longer conflicts):

It is also normal in some cases to leave the field red and lose the data during a merge simply because the data is incorrect and so can be safely deleted along with the slave record. 

Making the decision to manually edit, copy-over, or ignore conflicts is part of the procedure of processing each duplicate and would be decided on a record-by-record, field-by-field basis.

Text (Concatenate Merge):

E.g. ‘Customer Notes’ and ‘Customer Status’

When a text field has been given a type of Text (Concatenate Merge), then both the master and slave text fields will be highlighted green.  This tells you that no data will be lost, and instead the values will be strung together into a single record:

In this example the values in both the master and slave will be concatenated together, delimited (or separated) by a comma, carriage return, or whatever delimiter was selected during setup. 

The result in this case used a comma for CustomerNotes and a forward-slash for CustomerStatus:

Numbers:

E.g. ‘Total Sales’

When a field has been given an auto-merge type of Number both the master and slave fields will be green.  They will be combined by either summing, averaging, or selecting the minimum or maximum value.

In this example, the Total Sales are being added together during a merge resulting in this:

Dates:

E.g. ‘First Purchased Date’

When a field is given an auto-merge type of Date both the master and slave fields will be green.  They can be combined by selecting either the minimum (earliest date) or maximum (latest date) value.

In this example, the First Purchased Date will be the minimum value (earliest date) so a merge will result in this:

True-False / Yes-No:

E.g. ‘Allow Credit’

When a field is given an auto-merge type of True/False both master and slave will be green.  The auto-merge type can be either “False if different” or “True if different” – giving precedence to either true or false, but only when the two records are different.  When the records are both the same, the value will remain unchanged.

In these examples the two records will be merged with a “True if different” type:

Both are False – so the merge will be False (un-ticked).

Both are True – so the merge will be True (ticked).

Both are different – so the merge will be True (ticked).

Both are different – so the merge will be True (ticked).