Dealing with duplicate data

[arlo]

One area of usability I'd like to address is the situation where someone ends up with duplicate data. This could include duplicate songs because of importing the same data into different projects, duplicate layouts because of different users loading default layouts assigned only to them, or duplicate smart lists because of loading default smart lists into different projects. I think that in cases where users directly create one duplicate item, such as adding a new song and then realizing they had already previously added that song, it's easy to understand what's happening and clean it up. But with the import and load default functions, it's harder to see exactly what happened and users are more likely to be confused about where all the data came from and what to do with it.

I've tweaked the load default functions to be smarter about checking for existing data across projects and users and reassigning the existing data instead of adding duplicate data. But previously created data still exists, and maybe there are other situations that are leading to this issue. Do you have examples of duplicate data in your account that has been a challenge to deal with?

I'm envisioning a function in the web interface that could show duplicate items and let you choose which one to keep. But more examples of when this has been a problem would help clarify what the problem is and what solution would be best.

[arlo]

I don't hear about this problem as much as I used to. Perhaps a lot of duplicates were related to people migrating from Set List Maker? In any case, the website now includes Find Duplicates buttons on the Smart Lists, Layouts, Songs, MIDI Presets, MIDI Devices, Custom Fields, Tags, Set Names, Pause Names and Contacts pages, which can help clean up these lists.