Re: alphabetic header file

["James W. Kilgore" <qappdsn@xxxxxxx>]

We used multiple fields for this purpose:
Company name
Contact name
Alpha sort name

The Company name is used for addressing invoices/pack slips/labels/etc. where 
the
contact name is for the 'Attention to :' line.  The alpha sort name is for the
customer(company) sort sequence by phone book rules.

The company/contact names are mere text fields to be printed "as is".  The alpha
sort requires a human (gasp <g>) to decide on how to sort the list.  Real 
simple,
no special programming required and if someone makes a mistake, a little
education and the standard edit program will correct things.

We also tried parsing from end of string skipping Jr., Sr, III, DDS, CDP, MBA,
blah .. blah ..blah to find the person's last name, but that even fell into the
"educated rule" syndrome where if it ends in Co. it's a company, oh lets not
forget if the user forgets the period after Co or Inc or LLP and decided in the
long run it was cleaner to just have a separate sort field.

If your file does not contain one already, you could create a separate physical
file, so as not to disrupt what is already there, and populate it with the sort
field on a best shot parsing method.  Manual cleanup and extention to the edit
program will make it a done deal.

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Peter Coffin wrote:

> First, either separate out the two kinds of information you have into
> separate files, or define that you're looking at entities and not people.
> EG: pretend Bruce Adams is Bruce Adams, Inc. and sort accordingly.
>
> If Bruce is to be an individual, then do this:
>
> Enterprise                  Contact           Address        (etc.)
> --------------------------- ----------------- -------------- ------------
> Adams Brewery, Inc.                           123 Main St.
> J. A. Adams & Company, Inc.                   456 State St.
>                             Adams, Bruce      789 Oak St.
>                             Adams, Bruce Jr.  819 Oak St.
> Adam & Bruce Bagels & Buns                    1400 Maple St.
>
> and populate the missing fields as necessary.
>
> Of course, if the file is already mixed up as shown in your example,
> you'll have to send someone through the file to decide whether a
> record is an individual or an enterprise and put some sort of an
> indicator in a field in the the mixed file so you can then process
> it out into a more final form. In that case, redefining Bruce Adams
> as Bruce Adams (Inc.) may be your quicker solution.
>



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