Merging duplicate Outlook contacts

Over the years I have accumulated contact information on family, friends,
colleagues, and service providers. Unfortunately over the years the number
of duplicates has grown and grown thanks to synchronizations with a
Blackberry, a PDA, and a few Christmas card list imports. Some of the
duplicates contain information that is missing from another, one might have
an old address paired with a birthday, a cell phone number in one and the
home number in another.

I know that in other programs, like Salesforce.com, it is possible to view
the fields of duplicate contacts and indentify the information that will be
kept in the merged contact. I wish that this feature was available in
Outlook, because it would serve two purposes. It would reduce the fear
associated with accidentally deleting the most current information, and
minimize the time needed to clean up a contacts folder. The only additional
request is that it be easy to use and not require a degree in software
engineering to run.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...tlook.contacts

There are easy to use solutions to your problem, like:
Delete duplicate contacts from Rsoutlook.com
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/prods/prod11.html


Ricardo Silva [Outlook MVP]
Add-ins for Microsoft(c) Outlook(c)
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/products.html



"morneauja" wrote in message
...
Over the years I have accumulated contact information on family, friends,
colleagues, and service providers. Unfortunately over the years the
number
of duplicates has grown and grown thanks to synchronizations with a
Blackberry, a PDA, and a few Christmas card list imports. Some of the
duplicates contain information that is missing from another, one might
have
an old address paired with a birthday, a cell phone number in one and the
home number in another.

I know that in other programs, like Salesforce.com, it is possible to view
the fields of duplicate contacts and indentify the information that will
be
kept in the merged contact. I wish that this feature was available in
Outlook, because it would serve two purposes. It would reduce the fear
associated with accidentally deleting the most current information, and
minimize the time needed to clean up a contacts folder. The only
additional
request is that it be easy to use and not require a degree in software
engineering to run.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow
this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...tlook.contacts

The solution I'm looking for isn't simply to delete duplicates, I can do that
without a problem just as I have periodically over the years. The solution
I'm looking for is one that would allow me to merge information from
duplicate contacts that contact different pieces of information. One
duplicate might have my fathers work address and another might have the home
contact information. Rather than manually type the information from one into
the other and then delete the old, now empty, contact. I would rather be
able to look at the information that is in the duplicate contacts in a table
format, highlight the fields/cells that I want to merge into the primary
contact and then get rid of the non-primary contacts.

Contact Dad Dad
Primary Y N
City New York Brooklyn
State NY NY
Phone 2025551212 202555213

In this instance I would choose to keep Brooklyn as the city and get rid of
the other information during the merge. It would also be cool if in the free
form sections, like notes, it would be possible to choose the information in
both cells to be merged together.

I might be wrong, but the option you offered seemed to only offer the delete
component of this process and not the merge. Please let me know if I'm
wrong.

Julie


"Ricardo Silva [Outlook MVP]" wrote:

There are easy to use solutions to your problem, like:
Delete duplicate contacts from Rsoutlook.com
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/prods/prod11.html


Ricardo Silva [Outlook MVP]
Add-ins for Microsoft(c) Outlook(c)
http://www.rsoutlook.com/us/products.html



"morneauja" wrote in message
...
Over the years I have accumulated contact information on family, friends,
colleagues, and service providers. Unfortunately over the years the
number
of duplicates has grown and grown thanks to synchronizations with a
Blackberry, a PDA, and a few Christmas card list imports. Some of the
duplicates contain information that is missing from another, one might
have
an old address paired with a birthday, a cell phone number in one and the
home number in another.

I know that in other programs, like Salesforce.com, it is possible to view
the fields of duplicate contacts and indentify the information that will
be
kept in the merged contact. I wish that this feature was available in
Outlook, because it would serve two purposes. It would reduce the fear
associated with accidentally deleting the most current information, and
minimize the time needed to clean up a contacts folder. The only
additional
request is that it be easy to use and not require a degree in software
engineering to run.

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow
this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...tlook.contacts