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Preventing duplicate data in Dataverse columns

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Posted on by Tal22

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I am developing in Access using Dataverse tables as the data sources. I just discovered an oversight on Microsofts's end - there is not a way to prevent duplicate data entries in a column. For example, I have a Case Number generated from another software program. I want to type the Case Number from the other program field into a Dataverse column. The Case Number is attached to a customer. If I type in two John Smith's, for example, I want to make sure that they are unique and not duplicates. I enabled Duplicate Detection but that feature doesn't work. With this deficiency in mind, I am seriously doubting if Dataverse is a viable solution to support data integrity for Access DB's and Model Driven Apps. Yes, I will eventually migrate to Power Apps, but in the meantime are there any work arounds to address this issue?

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Microsoft Dataverse with Power Apps

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ChrisPiasecki 6,428 Most Valuable Professional on at

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Hi @Tal22,

Duplicate detection is meant to detect a potential duplicate. In the model driven apps UI, it prompts the user and let's them decide if they want to proceed anyways or cancel. Since you're creating the record from Access, there is no duplicate detection UI.

If you want to ensure uniqueness is enforced and prevent duplicates, you can setup Alternate Keys. This gets enforced at the data layer. Make sure you clear out existing duplicate records before creating the key or it will fail to create the database indexes behind the scenes and activate the key.

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Tal22 269 on at

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Thanks. I should have mentioned that I tried setting up an alternative key but it did not read the column I needed. Issues such as this does not instill a lot of confidence in me that Dataverse is a serious database solution. I will now have to run Access queries to manually find duplicate data, which adds more labor and complexity, and explain to my non-tech supervisor why Dataverse fails in this regard.