Product Reference Numbers

[mcewan7]

If I open up my product table in Access, I have a lot of products that look like they could possibly be duplicates but they have '1!' inserted before the usual number in the product reference field. ie. a product is in there as 1226 it also seems that it has a duplicate entry but with a product reference of 1!1226.

Just wondered what this means as I am tempted to clean them out. Hope this isnt a bad idea

[TraceyHand]

that's how duplicates (as they are used in the catalog) are defined in order to give them unique product references.
If you create a duplicate in your catalog, it uses your original product ref with 1! at the start..with subsequent duplicates starting with 2! 3! etc

If you delete it from your product table, you'll lose it in your catalog (and quite possibly cause a whole lot of other issues too...don't mess with Access unless you really know what you're doing!)

[mcewan7]

Thanks, thats exactly what I thought they would be.

I would never mess with Access, its a fussy beast I've exported the table into an excel file because I'm looking to import my product data into edirectory.co.uk. So thanks for your very fast reply because I can go ahead and delete them from my spreadsheet for this purpose. I was just tempted to do the same in Access to clear up the chaff, now I know that their not chaff I'll leave well alone!