How to Delete Duplicate Outlook Contacts Easily and Safely

Outlook is a popular communication tool for businesses, organizations and individuals. Users often notice that there are two or multiple duplicate contacts with identical information in their Outlook contacts list.

Duplicate contacts always lead to problems and trouble, for example, you send an email to a wrong person. How to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook? This article collects four effective methods to delete duplicate Outlook contacts easily.

Why Duplicate Contacts Appear in Outlook?

Duplicate contacts often occur in Outlook. What has caused this phenomenon? The following are several reasons. No matter for what reason, it is necessary to delete duplicate Outlook contacts.

1. Outlook is synced with your iPhone, laptop or other devices.
2. Outlook is synced with different platforms or services like iCloud, Gmail, LinkedIn, Twitter.
3. You add a new contact into Contacts folder using the same names or email addresses, but you have created the contact before.
4. The same person sends you emails with different Outlook accounts like business account, personal account, school account and you add the contact with the same name.

Method 1. Delete All Duplicate Outlook Contacts Easily and Safely

The best way to remove duplicate contacts from Outlook is to use Cisdem ContactsMate, a contacts management tool. This application is user-friendly and easy to use. Deleting duplicate contacts in Outlook is a simple task. It only takes a few steps.

This method applies to all different versions of Microsoft Outlook. As long as you have an Outlook account, you can use this contacts manager. Cisdem ContactsMate can not only delete duplicate contacts from Outlook, but also from other different platforms and services like iCloud, Gmail, Facebook and so on.

As the best contacts manager for Mac, Cisdem ContactsMate has various features:

• Delete Outlook contacts easily
• Delete contacts in iCloud, Gmail, Facebook
• Export Outlook contacts to iCloud, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Import Outlook contacts from iCloud, gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Sync Outlook contacts to different devices like iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• Export/print Outlook contacts to CSV, vCard, Html, Excel, etc.
• Add, edit and share contacts
• Backup and restore contacts list with 1 click

Simple Steps to Delete Duplicate Outlook Contacts

1. Download and install Cisdem ContactsMate.

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After installation, open this program and click Add Account in the left top corner.

2. Select Exchange and sign in with your Outlook account.

3. Check the box next to Contacts.

4. Click the button next to the Updated contacts detected message, then click Scan button.

Now, your Outlook contacts will be imported to this application in Group Exchange in the left side.

5. Delete duplicate Outlook contacts with 1 click.

The scanning result will be listed in a new window immediately, find Duplicate contacts, and select “Delete duplicate contacts” under Solution, then, click Fix all.

After simple steps, duplicate contacts in Outlook are removed successfully with the help of Cisdem ContactsMate.

Benefits of Using Cisdem ContactsMate:

Benefit 1. Delete duplicate Outlook contacts more flexibly

When removing duplicate contacts from Outlook, Cisdem ContactsMate provides you more flexibility. You can decide what kind of duplicate contacts to be scanned.

There are a wide range of options, including duplicate name, exact duplicate contacts, incomplete name, duplicate phone number in a single contact, etc.

> Go to Cisdem ContactsMate in the menu and click Preferences.

> Under Conflicts option, check items as you need.

Benefit 2. Delete duplicate Outlook contacts safely with a backup

To prevent something wrong, it is wise of you to make a copy of Outlook contacts before removing the duplicates. You can backup with one click with the help of this contacts manager.

Every time you backup, there will be a file version named the date when you make a copy. You don’t need to worry about losing contacts data no longer.

> Click Cisdem ContactsMate in the menu and go to Preferences.

> Under Backup & Restore, choose Exchange and click Backup.

If you want to restore the contacts, find the version that you need, and click Restore. Then, the contacts will be recovered to the version you choose.

Benefit 3. Export Outlook contacts to vCard, Excel, Html, CSV easily

As we all know, Outlook can only export contacts to CSV and OLM. It doesn’t support other kinds of files. Luckily, Cisdem ContactsMate is able to export Outlook contacts to 9 files formats, including vCard, Excel, Html, Pages, Docx, CSV and so on.

If you need to export Outlook contacts to other formats, Cisdem ContactsMate can help you, especially when you need to import Outlook contacts to iCloud. iCloud can only import vCard file.

> Right click Group Exchange, and go to Export.

> In Save As, select the format that you wish.

Method 2. Remove Duplicate Contacts Manually in Outlook

If you don’t want to delete duplicate Outlook contacts with a contacts manager, you can do it in Outlook with manual steps. This method applies to Microsoft Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016, and 2019.

#1. Remove A Handful of Duplicate Contacts Manually in Outlook

This method only applies to delete a small portion of duplicate contacts. If you have a large number of Outlook contacts, removing duplicate contacts one by one is time-consuming and tedious, and it is very likely to delete Outlook contacts by mistake.

1. Launch Outlook and click people icon.

2. In the Current View section, Click Phone icon to scan duplicate contacts.

3. In the list of contacts, hold Ctrl key and click duplicate contacts one by one, and press Delete.

#2. Remove A Large Amount of Duplicate Contacts Manually in Outlook

This manual method takes advantage of the duplicate detection function in the process of importing contacts to Outlook. When you import contacts to Outlook, duplicate contacts will not be imported to Outlook.

It includes three major processes: move your Outlook Contacts to a new folder, export your contacts to a CSV file and import your contacts from the CSV file. Though this approach is very complicated, it is an effective way to delete duplicate Outlook contacts.

Process 1. Move your Outlook Contacts to a new folder

1. Open Outlook and click People.

2. Right-click Contacts and choose New Folder. Name the new folder, for example Duplicates.

3. Go back into your main Contacts folder. And press Ctrl+A to select all your contacts.

4. Drag and drop all your contacts to the new folder Duplicates. Or use Ctrl+Shift+V to open the Move to Folder dialog and select your Duplicates folder.

5. Now, your Contacts folder is empty.

Process 2. Export your contacts to a CSV file

6. Choose File > Open & Export > Import/Export.

7. In Import and Export Wizard, select Export to a file.

8. Select Comma Separated Values and click next.

9. Select the Duplicates Folder you created in step 2, and find a place to store the exported contacts file.

Process 3. Import your contacts from the CSV file

10. Choose File > Open & Export > Import/Export. And select Import from another program or file.

11. Select Comma Separated Values.

12. Browse to find the CSV file you just exported. Under Options, select Do not import duplicate items. Click next.

13. Import the CSV file to main Contacts folder. Contacts folder is the one currently empty.

14. Select finish.

15. Go to the Duplicates contact folder.

16. Click one of the contacts in the folder, and press Ctrl+A to select all contacts.

17. Drag and drop the selected contacts to you main Contacts folder. Or press Ctrl+Shift+V to use the Move to Folder dialog box.

18. In the process of moving, every time Outlook encounters a duplicate contacts, there will be a pop-up window with two choices.

19. Select Update information of selected Contacts, and click Update. If you need to repeat the exact choice for all duplicate contacts, choose “Update All”.

When you finish all the steps above, duplicate contacts in Outlook are removed.

Method 3. Link Duplicate Contacts on Outlook.com

This method applies to Outlook on the Web.

You can use the Link duplicate contacts function in Outlook to clean up your contacts. This function identifies contacts that have two or multiple entries and gives you the option to link similar information into a single view so they appear as a single contact. 

Steps on Link Duplicate Contacts on Outlook Web

1. Go to Outlook.com and sign in.
2. Click the application icon at the top left corner.

3. Select People in the menu list.

4. Select All contacts.

5. Click Manage in the top right corner of the page. And go to Link duplicate contacts.

6. Click Link contacts.

Now, contacts that have similar information are listed here. You can check and link duplicate contacts.

Method 4. Merge Duplicate Outlook Contacts Via Gmail

As a popular email service, Gmail provides a way to delete duplicate contacts. The principle of this method is to transfer Outlook contacts to Gmail, merge the duplicates in Gmail, and then move the merged Outlook contacts back into Outlook.

1. Launch Outlook. Go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export.

2. Select Export to a file.

3. Choose Comma Separated Values (CSV). 

Name the exported contacts file and find a location on your computer to save it.

4. Go to Google Contacts and sign in using your Gmail account.

5. Click Import in the left menu list.

6. Select the contacts file that you just exported from Outlook.

7. Click Find duplicates.

After importing is finished, a question asking you to look for duplicates appears at the top of the page, just click Find Duplicates.

8. Then, the duplicates will be listed here.

Now you can decide to Merge or Dismiss the duplicates. 

9. After you Merge the duplicates, click Export in the menu list.

10. Under Export Contacts, Select the corresponding imported group. Don’t select all contacts.

Under Export as, Choose Outlook CSV.

11. Finally, import the merged contacts back into Outlook.

Open Outlook, go to File > Open & Export > Import/Export, import the CSV file.

10 Tips to Manage Your Outlook Contacts

Contacts in Outlook are not only names and numbers. They are precious assets in your life. To keep your work and business productive and organized, we provide you 10 tips to manage your contacts in Outlook well. We hope these tips are helpful to you.

1. Create contact groups in Outlook to share conversation, files and calendar easily.
2. Keep a simple contacts folder and don’t create a lot of folders.
3. delete duplicate contacts regularly.
4. Periodically backup your contacts to avoid data loss.
5. Change formats of contacts names to a uniform format that you prefer.
6. Fill in as much information as possible when you add a new contact.
7. Keep contacts information up to date.
8. Structure your contacts with color categories.
9. Weed out old contacts.
10. Make sure all changes are synchronized.

Summary

When you finish reading this article, I believe you have learned several ways to delete duplicate contacts in Outlook. Just choose one that suits you best and clean your contacts list now.

I have tried the four methods above. I personally think the best way to delete duplicate Outlook contacts is to use Cisdem ContactsMate, the contacts manager. It couldn’t be simpler. Just free download this application and have a try.

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