Remove or merge duplicate users en masse
 

Hi,

I'm in the process of importing our Discus forum into vBulletin. Because of the nested structure of our Discus board, I've had to create separate tab files of the top levels that are currently in the Discus forum for import into the vBulletin installation. This works just fine except for one major problem. Every time I import one of these top level tab files, and I have to do the Import Users module, which for the "Discus 4 tab file" option does not offer the option to "Associate Users". (I can't use the "discus_file" option because of the nested structure - the deeper threads/posts don't display if I try to use this import.) I had been under the impression that when I used the "cleanup" module for successive imports that the duplicate Users issue would be resolved. I was sorely mistaken :(

Ergo, where the old board had 808 users, I now have over 3000, with multiple entries of duplicate users! These are exact duplicates - not the "import-username" and "username" that others have reported. Therefore, I can't use the "Merge Users" command, or a similar bulk sql script that I found elsewhere on one of the vBulletin forums. I could go through and delete the dupes, but I'm not sure now if they are differentially associated with the posts that I've imported (I've been selectively seeding the new install with only some of the old posts). I'm about 1/3 of the way done with the number of imports I'll need to do, so this is not a trivial point for me at all - we're talking about many hours worth of work if I have to manually delete these duplicate users.

Is there a way to mass merge/associate these duplicates with themselves? Will deleting/eliminating them screw up the user ids for the posts?

Help (please oh please) would be tremendously appreciated!

Thanks
Sherry