Transcript

Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts

Sometimes the same person ends up in your database more than once, like once from an import and again from a landing page. This icon next to the email means another contact has the same email address.

To merge, open the contact, click Actions and choose Merge Contact. Under Likely Duplicates, the system lists every contact with the same name, the same email address, or any of the same phone numbers. So it even finds this one, where the name was typed differently. If the one you want isn't listed, click Search for the other contact. Click Select next to the one to merge.

On this compare screen, the contact on the left stays, and the one on the right is removed. The system suggests keeping the one with more history, like notes and to-dos. To keep the other one instead, click Swap. Click it again to switch back.

Each row is a field where the two are different, and the green check mark shows what's kept. To keep the other value, just click it. The phone number you didn't pick isn't lost, because it's saved as Phone 2. The same goes for this email, which is saved as the Other Email. And a category you don't keep, like Lead here, is saved in a merge record you can look at later.

Under Moves To, you'll see what comes over from the removed contact, like its notes. Everything attached to the removed contact moves to the one you keep, including notes, email history, to-dos, appointments and attachments. Boards and related contacts are combined, with no duplicates. If a workflow or autoresponder is still running on the removed contact, you choose whether it continues or stops.

When everything looks right, click Merge Contacts, then Yes, Merge. You land back on the contact you kept, with a note about the merge. Click View merge details to see what moved, and every value that wasn't kept.

Riley still has one more duplicate. Open Merge Contact again, and select Rylee. Rylee is the same person, so leave the household box unchecked, and merge the same way.

Two different people in the same household, like a couple, can be combined too. On Jamie's contact, Merge Contact lists Robin, because they share a home phone. Click Select, and use this checkbox. The second person is saved as the Other Contact, so nobody gets lost.

To check your whole database for duplicates, open Reports and choose Duplicate Contacts. Pick a match, like First Name plus Last Name. Click Merge on any row, and when there's only one match, you go straight to the compare screen.