We have this same issue. We have a lot of duplicates in our database, and have been using the Mass Merge plugin for Raiser's Edge to merge these records. As far as database view is concerned, those records have been merged, they are inactive, yet in webview they are still listed as possible duplicates. Our policy is not to delete those inactive records straight away when merging, so it makes it difficult for us to get a handle on what the real number of duplicates is in the database. If the standard approach to merging in RE is to make a record inactive, I don't understand why the Possible Duplicates tool wouldn't take that into account (and at the very least allow a filter for inactive records, if not excluding them automatically).

If that's the case, if you look at that inactive record and see nothing of value on it, I'd jump to the step of deleting it. No need to remerge it in webview. Then it really is just a housekeeping exercise for you.

One thing I am finding upon really investigating these records in database view - it looks like the duplicate record was at some point merged into the older established record (in database view), but the dupe was not deleted, just made inactive.  So now in web view, it is showing up as a possible dupe... it seems we'll essentially have to re-merge these records, or manually delete the inactive duplicate in database view.

I think it is most likely a case 1. no real policy and/or 2. past employees at my org marking one record inactive when a duplicate is found, rather than actually merging the records or deleting a dupe with no information, and/or 3. an employee who doesn't know how to (or simply know to) reactive a record when a donation arrives for someone marked as inactive, rather than creating a whole new record. Our database seems to have loads of these...upon considering your response, I am re-thinking. We may have to just go through the process of merging the records so they will no longer appear in the possible duplicates list, or deleting a dupe if the record has no information. *sigh* guess I have a new project!  Thanks!

Hi! Can you speak more to how policy may work in your organization? My expectation would be that if there was an inactive Ron Fontenot record, and Ron gave a new donation (thus creating a new duplicate record) that an organization would say "Oh, Ron is now active again, let me activate the previous record (with all of its history) and delete this duplicate".

This is the scenario I am most familiar with. If there are other scenarios I am not familiar with, then it may be more appropriate to add an option to suppress duplicate pairs that include inactive records, rather than making this a hard rule.