The attached script will help you with cleaning up duplicate display names. 

PLEASE backup your database before using this script. 

You can run this from the host sql menu or from Management Studio.


This script will change duplicate display names after you remove the commented out lines.  YOU MUST CREATE A DATABASE BACKUP!!!

Make sure you change the PortalId appropriately.

Thank you Will.

Please check the line Last Post...under the subject
Script handling duplicate displaynames
Last Post 01 Jan 1900 12:00 AM by . 0 Replies.

Check out the date. I don't know if you are aware of this bug?

Posted By Frozen DNN on 24 Jun 2009 08:05 PM
Thank you Will.

Please check the line Last Post...under the subject
Script handling duplicate displaynames
Last Post 01 Jan 1900 12:00 AM by . 0 Replies.

Check out the date. I don't know if you are aware of this bug?

Hmm... it updated correctly when I posted. That's strange.

I have been looking for this post all day!!! Cleaning up my site has been a bear, 463 duplicate display names not to mention duplicate user with diffrent email address what a nightmare!!!

Thanks for the help Will.

What is/are the commented out lines?

I am trying to work through this exercise as well.
I already have PHD "Bulk User Manager", which I used to dump out and remove 2000+ dormant accounts, which made this a little easier.  Highly recommend it (it's cheaper than my time to write one SQL script ).

Using Will's script as a base, I also did one to look for duplicate email addresses, and have whittled that down to just a handful...for those I really would like to merge the users...does anyone have any scripts that do that for either AF or AS?

Is there no way to prevent users from inputting a display name from DNN? So if someone types a display name in, there would be a javascript to the right of the box, that would say, * Please input a Display name not being used. ?

I ran the script but nothing happened except for showing a list of duplicated display names. It does not change anything. Can you please be more specific on how to run the script? What are the "commented out lines"?

Also how does this work? The script just changes all the duplicated displaynames randomly? Please advise.

Did you uncomment the Update statement?

Posted By odove on 18 Jan 2010 02:20 PM
I ran the script but nothing happened except for showing a list of duplicated display names. It does not change anything. Can you please be more specific on how to run the script? What are the "commented out lines"?

Also how does this work? The script just changes all the duplicated displaynames randomly? Please advise.

I just peeked at the script... in order for it to change Display names you need to uncomment UPDATE command on line 40. This is the line:
--UPDATE dbo.Users SET DisplayName = @DisplayName + @suffix WHERE UserId = @UserId
just remove '--' in front of it.

To answer your question on how this works: it just takes a DisplayName and adds a suffix at the end of it, which is constructed of the first character of the last name if the last name is not an empty string, or the number from tmpCount.

I hope I answered your questions. Ask again if it's still not clear, I'll try to explain it in more detail

Cheers

Thanks a lot for the help! Now I got it working. :-)

How does this script change duplicate usernames? Beth1, Beth2, Beth3?

Thanks,

Will

That is correct.

Thanks, Will.

The link to the script appears to be broken.

Posted By ssidle on 27 Jan 2011 09:41 PM
The link to the script appears to be broken.

You may have just discovered a bug!

It doesn't necessarily have to be a bug. The topic is nearly two years old and many new versions of AS have been released in the meantime. I guess you should ask Will to provide with an up to date version of the script.

To me it is a bug if it did not upgrade the old links properly (especially because this is happening here). However, I am thinking this has to do with the vanity urls similar to tags issue. 

It is not a bug with Active Forums. It is the same problem that has been discussed with the changes in DNN 5.6 that cause problems with URL Rewriting. I did just make a change to Active Forums so that the bug in DNN 5.6 is less of a problem with attachments in AF.