Combining field values from multiple non-winning records

Pugs_Validity — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 18:47:02 GMT

A common concern we hear with Deduping records is the ability to retain valuable information from the same field across multiple records when merging.

The initial solution for this within DemandTools was the Field Copy Unique Field Rule in Dedupe. Field Copy Unique allows you to take a field from a non-winning record and populate it to an alternate field on the winning Record.

This approach can create a problem if you have multiple non-winning records and multiple unique values. Salesforce will only allow you to combine multiple values on a Multipicklist, Boolean, String, and Text Area field types.

This is where the Combine Field Value steps in. If you use the field copy unique approach to copy the non-winning values to a combinable field type, you will then be given the option to check the combine field value checkbox and combine multiple losing record’s value to the winning record.

FieldCopyUnique: Update the field with a unique value from a selected field

Designed to auto-populate "alternate" fields. e.g. alternate email or alternate phone fields
Can only select like field types to copy from, e.g. text field to text field, number field to number field etc.
ONLY populates the selected field on the winning record with unique values
The check for uniqueness is done by comparing data in the from field for all duplicate records in the group to the value in the from field on the winning record
Unique values are then written to the target field
If there are multiple unique values in the duplicate records, DemandTools will arbitrarily pick which one to keep

To specify which value to keep when there are multiples, use the FieldCopyUnique Scoring option instead

If a value currently exists in the target field, it will ONLY update this field if the Overwrite checkbox on the right is selected
Selecting the FieldCopyUnique option will highlight the Value box in yellow
Click in the yellow highlight and select the field to copy unique data from
The selected field will now be shown in the grid

topic Combining field values from multiple non-winning records in DemandTools

Combining field values from multiple non-winning records