In this article you will learn how to merge duplicate contacts in Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013 and Outlook 2016 without using any third-party tools, and how to keep your contact list clean in the future. Microsoft Outlook provides loads of handy tools that we use and love and even more features that we are unaware of. But regrettably, an option to dedupe the address book and combine multiple duplicate contacts into one is not on board. Luckily, we are not limited to use only those tools that Outlook provides explicitly.
With just a little creativity you can figure out a way to solve any, or nearly any, task you are faced with. Further on in this article you will find how you can check your Outlook contacts for duplicates and merge them without using any third-party software. Why duplicate contacts appear in Outlook The most common reason that leads to duplication is dragging a message to the Contacts folder in the Navigation pane in order to have a contact created automatically. Of course, this is the fastest way to add a new contact in Outlook and there's nothing wrong about it. However, if you also create contacts manually once in a while, you may end up having multiple contacts for the same person, e.g. If you misspell the contact's name or enter it in a different way.
Outlook has a Copy to My Calendar button which will save a couple of steps but it doesn't have an option to duplicate all newly created events to your personal calendar automatically. To use Copy to My Calendar, create the event on the shared calendar then click the Copy to My Calendar button instead of Save and Close.
Another scenario that leads to contact duplication is when a person emails you from different accounts, e.g. Using his or her corporate email address and a personal Gmail address. In this case, no matter how you create a new contact, by dragging a message to the Contacts folder or by clicking the 'New Contact' button on the ribbon, an additional contact for the same person will be created anyway.
Synchronization with a laptop or mobile device as well as with social platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, may also produce duplicate contacts. For example, if the same person is listed under different names in different address books, say Robert Smith, Bob Smith and Robert B. Smith, nothing prevents multiple contacts from being created in your Outlook.
If you work in a corporate environment, duplicate contacts may emerge in case your company maintains several address books on its Exchange servers. I think there's no need to explain what problems you might have when important details are scattered across several duplicated contacts in your Outlook. If you are reading this article, then most likely you are looking for a solution to sort it out. And below you will find a number of solutions to choose from. How to merge duplicate contacts in Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016 In most cases Outlook is smart enough to prevent duplication when you are trying to create a contact that already exists. However, if you already have a number of duplicate contacts in your address book, you need to apply a special technique to clean up the mess.
Okay, let's get started! To permanent accidental loss of data, we strongly recommend that you make a backup copy first, for example. Create a new Contacts folder. In Outlook Contacts, right click on your current Contacts folder and select New Folder from the context menu. Give a name to this folder, let's call it Merge dupes for this example. Move all your Outlook contacts to the newly created folder. Switch to your current contacts folder and press CTRL+A to select all the contacts, then hit CTRL+SHIFT+V to move them to the newly created folder ( Merge dupes folder).
Tip: If you are not very comfortable with shortcuts, you can simply right-click the selected contacts and choose Move from the context menu. Export the contacts to a.csv file using ' Import and Export' wizard. In Outlook 2010, Outlook 2013, and Outlook 2016, go to File Open Import. In Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2003, you will find this wizard under File Import and Export. The wizard will walk you through the export process, and you choose the following options:. Step 1. ' Export to a File'.
' Comma Separated Values (Windows)'. Select the Merge dupes folder you created earlier.
Choose the destination folder to save the.csv file. Click Finish to complete the export process. Tip: If you have multiple contact cards for the same person, personal details may be scattered across all those duplicate contacts, e.g. One contact contains business phone number, another contact includes a private phone number and so on.
In this case, the may come in very handy. This Excel add-in will quickly merge unique data from multiple duplicate rows in your.csv file. To better understand what I'm talking about, see how the data in the original.csv file looks like: And here is what we have after using the Combine Rows Wizard. If you are interested to try the Combine Rows Wizard on your own data, you can download a fully-functional trial version. Import contacts from the CSV file to your default Contacts folder. Start the Import wizard again as described in and select the following options:. Step 1.
' Import from another program or file'. ' Comma Separated Values (Windows)'. Browse to the exported.csv file. Be sure to select ' Do not import duplicate items'. This is the key option that does the trick! Select your main Contacts folder, which is currently empty, as the destination folder to import the contacts to. Click Finish to complete the import process.
Merge the deduped contacts with the original ones. Now you need to merge the deduped contacts that are currently in your main Contacts folder with the original contacts that reside in the Merge dupes folder, so that no contact details will get lost. Open the Merge dupes folder and press CTRL+A to select all the contacts. Then press CTRL+SHIFT+V and choose to move the contacts to your main Contacts folder. When a duplicate is detected, Outlook will throw a pop-up message suggesting that you update information of the existing contact and display a preview of data that will be added or updated, as shown in the screenshot below. Note: If you've used the to merge duplicated rows in the CSV file, this step is not actually needed, because all contact details were merged in a CSV file and are already in your main Contacts folder. Choose Update if these are duplicate contacts and you want to merge them.
Choose Add new contact if they are, in fact, two different contacts. If you want to expedite the process, click Update All and all changes will be accepted automatically in all duplicate contacts. If you want to review a particular contact later, click Skip.
In this case the original contact item will remain in the Merge dupes folder. When Outlook detects a duplicate contact with a different email address and you choose to update a contact, the current email address of the contact will be moved to the ' E-mail 2' field, as shown in the screenshot above. Note: If your Outlook does not show this dialog when you are adding duplicate contacts, then most likely the duplicate contact detector is off. See how to enable.
Merge duplicate Outlook contacts using Gmail If you have a Gmail email account (I guess most people do these days), you can use it to merge duplicate Outlook contacts. In a nutshell, the procedure is as follows.
Export your Outlook contacts to a.csv file, import that file to your Gmail account, use 'Find and merge duplicates' function available in Gmail, and finally import the deduped contacts back to Outlook. If you want more detailed instruction, here you go:. Export your Outlook contacts to a CSV file, as described in above ( File tab Open Import Export to a file Comma Separated File (Windows)). Log into your Gmail account, navigate to Contacts, and then click Import Contacts. Click the Choose File button and browse to the CSV file you created in step 1.
Gmail creates a new contact group for each imported file so that you can easily access and review it later. After importing is complete, click the Find & merge duplicates link. A list of found duplicate contacts is displayed and you can click the expand link to review and verify the contacts to be merged. If everything is Okay, click Merge. A word of caution: Regrettably, Gmail is not as smart as Outlook (or maybe just overcautious) to detect duplicate contacts with slight differences in a contact's names. For example, it failed to identify our fake contact Elina Anderson and Elina K. Anderson and one and the same person.
That is why, don't be disappointed if you spot a couple of duplicates after importing the merged contacts back to Outlook. It's not your fault, you did everything right! And there's still room for improvement for Gmail: ).
In Gmail, click More Export. To transfer the merged contacts back to Outlook. In the Export contacts dialog window, specify 2 things:. Under ' Which contacts do you want to export', choose whether to export all the contacts or a particular group only. If you want to export only those contacts that you imported from Outlook, it stands to reason to select the corresponding Imported group. Under ' Which export format', select Outlook CSV format.
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Then click the Export button to finish the export process. Finally, import the merged contacts back into Outlook, as described in. Remember to select ' Do not import duplicate items'! Tip: Before importing the merge contacts from Gmail, you can move all contacts from your main Outlook folder to a backup folder to avoid creating more duplicates. Link duplicate contacts in Outlook 2013 and 2016 If you are using Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2016, you can quickly combine several contacts related to the same person using the Link Contacts option. Open your contacts list by clicking People at the bottom of the Navigation pane.
Click on the contact you want to merge to select it. Then click the small dots button next to Edit to open the drop-down menu, and choose Link Contacts from the list. Under the Link Another Contacts section, start typing a name of the person you want to link in the search field, and as you type Outlook will display all contacts that match your search. Choose the needed contact(s) from the result list and click on it. The selected contacts will be merged straight away and you will see their names under the Linked Contacts heading. All you need to do is click OK to save the changes.
Of course, the Link Contacts feature is not the best choice to clean up a large contacts list cluttered with duplicates, but it will definitely help you quickly merge a few identical contacts into a single one. How to prevent duplicate contacts in your Outlook Now that you've cleaned up the mess in Outlook contacts, it makes sense to invest a few more minutes and lean how to keep your contact list clean in the future. This can be easily achieved by enabling the automatic Outlook duplicate contact detector. See how to do this in Microsoft Outlook 2010, 2013 and 2016:.
Go to the File tab Options Contacts. Under ' Names and filing', select Check for Duplicate Contacts When Saving New Contacts and click OK.
Yep, it's as easy as that! From now on, Outlook will suggest merging a new contact you're adding with the existing one, if they both have a similar name or identical email address. Hopefully, now you have a clean and neat contacts list in your Outlook and know how to maintain the order. Thank you for reading! You may also be interested in:. Thank you very much for a thumb up, I really appreciate it!
In fact, most of the solutions described in this article are free and can be accomplished using built-in Outlook tools. The only third-party add-in used in the first solution is Combine Rows Wizard for Excel. But this is just an optional time-saving alternative to quickly merge duplicate rows into one.
I thought it might be helpful to those who work with large Excel spreadsheets. You can merge duplicate Outlook contacts without it, as described further in the article, this will simply take a bit more time: ). Hi Svetlana, This really helped.
More so for making the steps so simple and easy to apply! For some reason I was not able to download the excel add-in (trial version). I have another problem.
My office uses MS Exchange (hosted server). I am being told that the contact detail fields in Exchange are far limited in comparison to that in the Outlook. SO there is no way to have my colleague's second (personal) email address saved or even their personal mobile number. We used to have all this earlier where the Admin would circulate details of the new joiness.
I find this pretty retarded. The only solution my IT is offering is that of manually adding these details in Outlook after the contacts are imported from Exchange's Global Address Book.
Have you come across this issue and any thoughts? Thanks in advance. Have a great day. Best Regards Jayesh. I downloaded the trial version of the combined rows wizard and it worked great! Easy to use, and I needed it badly. I had a lot of cross-linked records (corrupt data) that caused a ton of duplicates.
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It took 2,451 rows and merged them down into 36! Then I just searched the spreadsheet for semicolons and made decisions of what to keep vs. One thing I'm unsure of is which 'wins' between the Office 365 Exchange Server and Outlook.
Hopefully Outlook wins, so all those duplicates will be deleted from my contacts on Office 365. Taking it further, I then hope that Exchange wins and pushes the changes down to iPad & iPhone, which also have those 2,000+ dupes. Any idea how those syncs work? Thanks for a great article and great Excel add-in! Every time I try to scroll through my iPhone's contacts there are literally hundreds of entries for the same person, so hopefully this will resolve it.? Hello Chris, I am really glad to know the Combined Rows Wizard has been helpful to you, thank you very much for your feedback! Sorry, I cannot state anything with certainly regarding iPad & iPhone because I have different sets of contacts in Outlook and iPhone (business vs.
Personal: ) Usually, there is a setting to mark the main contacts, so in theory, syncing contacts with Outlook should resolve the issue. Anyway, I would strongly advise to backup the iPhone right before syncing the contacts in case something goes wrong.
Is there a way to determine which Folder Group a contact belongs to? For example, I have about 15 folder groups.
If I look at a listing of all of my contacts from the Contacts group, I see several duplicates. I do not see a 'Field' at the top to list what 'Folder Group' a contact belongs to and what happens is if I delete a duplicate contact, it deletes the one from a Folder Group and I don't want to delete the ones from Folder Groups, only the duplicates that aren't in any Folder Group. Thanks for your help! I went through al the steps you wrote and after i imported the csv file back this is what i got i copy pasted a sample of my contacts now. And now i lost half of my contacts. How do i fix the gibrish? Full Name File As Business Phone Mobile Phone Home Phone Business Fax E-mail Country/Region Department Job Title Categories – ’‰ €” ’‰ €”’‰, –’‰ —‰ 0 Israel —— ”—‡ ™˜‰” —— ”—‡ ™˜‰” 0 ˜€ ‘”˜ 0 ’‰˜ ˜‘‰‘ — „ ‰‘‰ — „ ‰‘‰ 052-4330234 — „”’ ‰ „”’‰, — ƒ‰„ 8631712 €˜‰€„ 8631715 — €‘‰ ‚ ‰ ˜‰ — €‘‰ ‚ ‰ ˜‰ (052) 393 3551 — € ‰ €‰, — 8636355 †‰„ – €‰™‡ €‰™‡, – 052-5318187 — ‘” ‘ ‰ ‘ ‰, — ‘” — —‰ ‡†˜ — —‰ ‡†˜ 052-564-0455.
This page contains methods and utilities you can use to back up profiles, accounts and personal settings. For information backing up PST and other files, see. This page is specific to email accounts and personal settings (i.e., Tools, Options settings). Unless specified, the utilities listed in the Tools sections will backup the entire profile: PST, Signatures and all other files associated with the profile as well as all personal settings stored in the registry. Many will also back up other personal files and settings.
Profiles In Outlook 2010 and older, profiles are stored in the registry at HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Windows NT CurrentVersion Windows Messaging Subsystem Profiles In Outlook 2013, the profile moves to the HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 15.0 Outlook Profiles key. Change the version in the path for Outlook 2016: HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 16.0 Outlook Profiles While you can export the registry keys to backup your profile, we don't recommend using this method to move profiles to a new computer.
Too many files in the profile point to specific paths under your Windows user account and moving the profile can result in errors if the user name is not identical. You'll also get errors if the addins hat were installed when you exported the registry are not installed when you restore the registry keys. We recommend containing your accounts if you will need to restore your configuration often, especially on other computers. Windows Easy Transfer Easy Transfer (WET) can be used to backup and move the profiles and pst files to a new computer however, using profiles moved with WET may have a broken address book. For this reason, we recommend making a new profile after using WET to move files to a new computer. Save My Settings Wizard This is found only in older versions of Office. It copies the profile but not the PST files.
Registry Settings Along with your profile, you'll find all of the Options in the registry, in the following locations (14.0 is Outlook 2010): HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 14.0 Outlook - Outlook customizations are found under this key. (It's generally safe to move this key to a new computer.) HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office Outlook - Information about add-ins.
(This key should not be used on a different computer.). HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Policies Microsoft office 14.0 outlook - This key will only exist if you have certain policies enabled. Most home users will not have settings here. It's safe to use on other computers. Don't forget to change the version number if you aren't using Outlook 2010. Outlook 2016: 16.0 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 16.0 Outlook Outlook 2013: 15.0 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 15.0 Outlook Outlook 2007: 12.0 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 12.0 Outlook Outlook 2003: 11.0 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 11.0 Outlook Outlook 2002: 10.0 HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 10.0 Outlook You can use a simple batch file to export your registry keys.
You can run the task scheduler using an Outlook macro or set it up in Task Scheduler. Paste the following line into a new NotePad file (change the version number if necessary) and save it with the extension.bat. Double click on the file to Run. REG EXPORT 'HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 15.0 Outlook' 'C: Users Diane My Box Files Outlook-options.reg' /y. Tools Backup and restore Outlook data files, interface options, and settings.
Backup and restore operations can be run from the command line, with your favorite Windows scheduling program for unattended operation. Supports Outlook 2010, 2007, 2003, 2002, and 2000.
BackRex Outlook Backup is a backup and restore tool for Microsoft Outlook. It allows you to backup address book, mail and other folders, mail accounts, message rules, signatures, stationery, and all personal settings. Backup jobs can be scheduled to run on a regular basis. Supports Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2010. Save all your Outlook settings including Emails, Contacts, Tasks, your Calendar, Notes, Journal entries, Email accounts, Outlook rules, Signatures and many more MailStore Home free email archiving and backup software for all private users. Over the years, emails can become scattered among different computers, programs and mailboxes.
Archive your internet mailboxes such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail or any mailboxes using POP3 or IMAP; Microsoft Outlook 2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010; Outlook Express and Windows Mail; Microsoft Exchange Server and Hosted Exchange; Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey.EML and other email files. MessageExport for Outlook is an add-in that helps you get your email out of Outlook in particular way. MessageExport lets you save selected or new email messages to different formats, including PDF, EML, MSG, GIF, TIF, HTML, MHT, CSV, txt, and others. MessageExport can convert, name and save Outlook email in a single operation. Includes a timer function, so MessageExport can run every xx minutes to process new emails in a specific Outlook folder and save it in text format on a network folder. Backup your Outlook Personal Folders (.pst files) in a compressed, zip compatible, archive for a smaller and more easily managed file. All of your critical Outlook control files are included in the backup - Signatures, Stationery, Wizard Rules, etc are preserved for easy recovery.
OutBack Plus allows you to restore the backup data to the same or another machine. Automatic reminder to backup after a set number of days - according to your needs. Works with all versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2010 32- and 64-bit. Backup pst files using this backup from Microsoft. The Personal Folders Backup download creates backup copies of your.PST files at regular intervals, in Outlook 2002 and later versions, making it easy to keep all of your Outlook folders safely backed up. Outlook 2010+ needs needs a reg key to use this addin. Outlook to Outlook moves email, contacts, and calendar items quickly and easily from your PC running Microsoft Outlook to your new PC running Microsoft Outlook.
An mail back up utility which allows to backup all the objects like emails, contacts, notes, calendars etc. Take incremental, differential and full backup to save backup at any location. Some of the other main features of backup software are: schedule backup process, preview of emails which could be recovered, feature to restore complete as well as selected emails etc. Software works with Outlook 2010 (32 bit), 2007, 2003, 2002. What problems are you having with it?
You can export the registry. However, because they point to specific paths on your hard drive, the backups is best used only on the computer that you created it on - basically, it's for recovery purposes, not moving to new computers. You can use a batch field to export the key - set it up in Task Scheduler to run it on a schedule.
It's also possible to export it using VBA and run it when a reminder fires but the batch file is much simpler. REG EXPORT 'HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Microsoft Office 15.0 Outlook Profiles profile-name' 'C: Users Diane My Box Files Outlook-profile.reg' /y.