This article is related to the previous discussion "Cloning a Person and assigning to a new Company".

In a default install of Sage CRM it is not possible to merge a person record with another person that is attached to a different company.

You can see in the image above only the contacts from the same company are listed as possible source records.

But this is a feature of Sage CRM that is controlled by the information held in the custom_sysparams table.

If we want to change this feature then we will need to change it directly in database as there is no available control for this within the System Administration screens.

To make it possible to merge a person record with a source person record attached to any company (or none) then we need to change the System parameter 'SearchforAllPeople' to be 'Y'.

This can be done by opening a SQL Server Management Studio, connecting to the CRM database and running the following SQL

update custom_sysparams
set parm_value = 'Y'
where parm_name = 'SearchforAllPeople';

You will then need to refresh the custom_sysparams metadata from within the administration screens.

Note: If in this case the Refresh Metadata fails then you may need to stop and start IIS.

You will then be able to see all person records when attempting to merge person records

Note:

Very careful consideration must be given before enabling this as it can fundamentally impact an organisations ability to keep track of meaningful historic conversations with persons who have have been associated with many companies. If a person record is merged with a person record from another company and the associated records are also transferred (Notes, Communication, Opportunities etc) then this can be profoundly problematic. It is understandable that an organisation may want to keep track of all communications that it has had with a person no matter which company with which they have been associated but it is better to create and keep separate person records for that 'real world' contact associated with the different companies and to use features such as the related entities feature to allow the historical link to be maintained.

To clone an existing person record and attach the new record to a different company then please see the article, "Cloning a Person and assigning to a new Company".