outlook how to delete dupl

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Outlook: How To Delete Duplicated Contacts

Contributed by shamanstears November 26, 2007

ShareThis Tagged: Microsoft Outlook

Sometimes syncing Outlook with another application or device can result in the addition of a

duplicated list of contacts. Removing this list can be quite cumbersome if you take the time to delete

each one, especially if you have collected a large number of addresses and such. Here’s a much quicker

method:

1. Go to Contacts.

2. Click View, mouseover Current View and select Phone List. This will create a list of all of your contacts

in a column based view.

Outlook: How To Delete Duplicated Contacts | Microsoft Outlook | Tech-... http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2700/outlook_how_to_delete_duplicate...

1 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

3. Right-click a column header and select Field Chooser from the resulting menu.

4. In the Field Chooser box, use the dropdown and select All Contact fields.


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5. Select Created.

6. Drag Created to the Colun Headers to add it to the list. Close the Field Chooser box.


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7. Now click on the newly added column header (Created). This will sort all of your items by the date that

they were added to your Contacts.

8. Scroll down to the first contact in the list that is to be deleted and select it.

9. Scroll down to the last contact that is to be deleted. Hold down the Shift key and select this contact. This

will highlight all of the contacts that you are going to remove.

10. Press the Delete key. The duplicate contacts will be removed.

11. Click View, mouseover Current View and select the view you normally use for your contacts (such as

Business Cards).

12. Your Contacts should not display any duplicates.

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Anonymous 1 year ago

What version of Outlook is this in reference to? I ask because I use Outlook at work and when I click

on View, there is no selection titled "Current View" available to click.

I am using Outlook 2003 at both home and work.

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Joe Marfice 8 months ago

I have Outlook 2003 as well. It should be available as a button on your toolbar. If the "Current

View" button isn't available on your toolbar, use

View / Toolbars... / Customize...

to bring up the customize dialog, and then select the

Commands tab

at the top. From there, select

View

and scroll until you find "Current View". Click-and-drag this button to the toolbar, close the dialog

box, and you're done!

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Just what I needed. After installing the latest version of MS Office after the reload, I synched up my Q

and doubled my entire contact list. This saved a lot of time!!!!!


5 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

TexasDon

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Oh my gosh!!! This is wonderful - I just upgraded to Outlook 2007 and did a sync with my Treo 755 -

since my Treo crashed just prior I had to go off my Outlook 2007 which I knew was filled with

duplicates but didn't have the time to remove manually. So my Treo was now duplicate hell. I had 1409.

I tried this solution - it took my 10 minutes and I now have 731.

Couple of added ideas. If your skeptical ( I am sorry I WAS) that removing all contacts created before

your last sync will actually remove precious old contacts, a quick ease of mind. In Outlook 2007 after

the sort by Created field step, hit Control Home to be sure you are at the top. In the Search Contact

field type in the last name of a contact you know is duplicated (take a quick peek at your phone if

necessary) and hit enter. I typed in Gibson and got 4 duplicates of my person (I had synced a number of

times because of my crash and Upgrade problems) Each was listed with a different Created date but all

were the same. Now I was much less anxious to complete the deletions.

Quick hint - when highlighting the duplicates in the Created field simply highlight the first and hold

down your SHIFT key and hit your END key. All are highlighted to the last record. Very fast! Hit

DELETE to get rid of them all.

Now how to fix your phone. I'd recommend a quick sync before you this step but then you have to do

the deletion in Outlook again. But if you believe your Outlook has all your contacts (albeit duplicated)

then don't.

Find your HotSync icon on computer, right click and select custom. I then customized all Selctions to

"DO NOTHING" except for Contacts that I told the Desktop to OVERWRITE. Now your phone is free

and clear.

Don't believe me - go to that duplicate on your phone that you found in Outlook that convinced you

this would work - you will only see ONE!

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Pat 1 year ago

Great method of doing this!!!!!!!!!!!

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6 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

nbsc 1 year ago

Terrific!

2,000 contact data base with duplicate entries.

This beats restoring from a backup only a few days old.

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Joan 1 year ago

What is the difference between Busines Contact Manager and our Contacts records?

Are they 2 different animals? I want to delete the Bus Contact Mgr, but can't seem to manage it.

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Andrew M 1 year ago

This was brill & really helped me.

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Chris 1 year ago

All my contacts show the same creation date.... and time... including the duplicates.

Any other suggestions?

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Craig 1 year ago

Yes, I had/have a similar problem... IF they are identicle its easy -- just delete all but one for a

goven contact. But if you are lazy like me :) and revised a few contacts but don't know which ones

are not identicle, two tips:

Add the "modified time" to the list to see which one was modfied latest.

Add the "size" field to the list and make sure to format it in exact bytes -- it two contacts are the

EXACT size to the byte (e.g. 2,089 bytes) you can be pretty confident they are identicle.

Secondly, using these fields as well as the created field, play with "group by" on the "file as" field

or some field that is ALWAYS consistent for 2+ duplicates based on the way you work. Then you


7 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

can just scan the "groups" with 2+ entries and triage them with the original author's method plus

the two other fields I suggested to make sure to get the latest.

Finally, of you can't figure it out by glancing at these fields, drag the contact(s) to a temporary

contact folder, and drag them back in one at a time -- Outlook will then notice the duplicate and

merge them. Unfortunately there is no easy way to do this en masse as far as I know.

Craig

www.claritycon.com

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larry groves 12 months ago

Done - it took longer finding the fix than executing it - what a help

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Jim 12 months ago

I deleted a contact (distro group) by mistake and I want to get it back. Where does it go, and can I get it

back?

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Jake B. 12 months ago

Great tip. Worked great in Outlook 2007 after I synced my iPAQ and suddenly ended up with all

duplicate contacts for some reason. Thanks.

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Rich 11 months ago

My contacts on my iPod Touche are duplicated when syncing with Outlook. They are not in duplicate

in Outlook

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8 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

jbjbcooper 10 months ago

I followed the instructions to a 'T'. I hit delete and lost all my contacts. Can't seem to restore them.

Delete erased all my contacts, not just the duplicates

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Dmitry 10 months ago

It doesn't work if all contacts of the same date!

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Howard 10 months ago

works great!

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Bill 10 months ago

super format

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Anon 10 months ago

This in NO WAY coherently groups the duplicate records; it is still a manual process or you will simply

delete all your contacts.

It's easier just to export to excel; clean it up and re-import it.

This is nonsense.

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Mikey 4 months ago

I agree 100%! This only is good for that singular situation where you have double-synched a

handheld to an existing Outlook database and essentially duplicated the entire database. If not,

then you still have to hunt and peck to find your duplicates. There are trial SW's out there that will

do an actual search for duplicates.

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9 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

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L3 9 months ago

Most of my contacts have the same 'Created' date because they are given the date of import.

This does not indicate which contacts are duplicates.

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Luois 9 months ago

Excellent !!! Worked like a charm ! Thank for putting and end to a headache!

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Sarah 9 months ago

How do you do this for Outlook 2007/Vista?

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lorraine 8 months ago

I deleted a contact with information that i would like to retrieve, thought everyting went into my

deleted foler but nothing there, does anyone know how to retrieve a deleted contact?

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John M. 8 months ago

Now THAT is a really good tip. Thankis!

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Jay Glass 7 months ago

Great tip! Much better than software reported to do this function. Thank you for publishing this


10 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

method. Best to you

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John Scott 7 months ago

I don't know how I got here???

The question was how do I remove all blank entries in my addressbook? You see I have 277 contracts

and more than that are all blank when I export?

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Jeff 6 months ago

Great tip! I've been through this problem many times--still dealing with it, in fact. This will help

immensely.

Wondering if you can help with a similar issue. On syncing with my iPhone, it duplicated all Work

Phones and Mobile Phones in EVERY contact...so no duplicate contacts, but all with duplicated phone

numbers. So, I want to duplicate the 2nd entries in each contact...like deleting a column out of a

spreadsheet. Thx.

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Rinesh 6 months ago

This was really helpful. Great thanks

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Mike 6 months ago

WARNING: These tips did not work for me...I DELETED ALL MY CONTACT..NO WAY TO

RETRIEVE. THEN I SYNCED MY IPHONE THINKING I COULD RE LOAD THE CONTACT

NEGATIVE....DELETED ALL CONTACTS ON MY IPHONE!!!!! LUCKILY I HAVE MY OTHER

COMPUTER WITH NUMBER TO BACK UP...LET'S SEE....

SO WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

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11 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

Scott 5 months ago

Ya me too. Do not have the last 2wks of new contacts. Not as bad as some I suppose.

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Sam 5 months ago

I don't have any experience with iPhones but with any gadget, if you delete entries from your

computer, and then synchronise it with your gadget, it's only logical that the process removes those

entries from your gadget as well!

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Kelly 5 months ago

I did EVERYTHING asked but once I deleted what I thought were the duplicates, I selected Business

Cards view and NO CONTACTS!

Now I have to go to my Deleted Folder and drag them all back WHY?

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Elaine Northcutt 5 months ago

This solution worked perfectly!

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Don Fullilove 4 months ago

Is this a joke? I was able to delete all of my contacts by following the above instructions.....all I wanted

to do was delete the duplicates. Now, can anyone help me recover my contact files?

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Eddy 4 months ago

Auto select findes some old addresses that I cannot find them anywhere and they are not in my contact


12 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

list. are they in anothe Global or MS Office address book? How can I find an ddelet them.

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mike 3 months ago

Wow this is great, saved a ton of time, worth the effort of going to web site and looking for help,

sometimes it is a waste of effort, not this time for me,

I have 2007

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gaucho 3 months ago

can you locate a contact by number? i.e. 562 (of 1059)

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Name 3 months ago

Thank you for this information. I was about ready to tear my hair out!!

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Ron Freedman 2 months ago

I followed the directions above exactly, the process deleted practically all of my records duplicates and

non-duplicates. Is there any way to find the records it delected so I could reinstall them. Living with

duplicates is better than having nothing at all.

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Eddy 2 months ago

I am surprise as in my case when I deleted the file Outlook.nk2 and restarted Outlook, it

regenerated a new file with all previous contacts. It was good for a time, but more surprisingly the

old email addresses are coming back, It appears to me that they are some where in crazy MS. I

suggest that you search your computer for *.nk2 you may find the deleted file.

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13 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

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Ron 2 months ago

I tried to find *.nk2 file but was unable to find one. Any other suggestions?

Ron

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Eddy 2 months ago

Sorry Ron, unless you had it syncronised with another application, like Mobile Phone etc,

otherwise no other suggestion, maybe you want to talk with MS.

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ceterzer 1 month ago

This worked spectacularly and saved me hours of work

Thanks!

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swise 1 month ago

if you hit shift at the last duplicate you wish to remove it highlights all contacts in between and deletes

duplicates and non-duplicates. Now I understand that you can scroll through using the ctrl key and

highlight all duplicates manually but I wanted to find a time saving way to do this...

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Neal 4 weeks ago

Sound great, but I do not have a "created" field in my Outlook 2007.

Any suggestions?

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14 of 16 11/4/2009 11:57 AM

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Name 4 weeks ago

this did not help at all!!!

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belladaniel 3 weeks ago

I removed all my contact informtion in order to remove all duplicates and managed to deleted my entire

database.Very Smart! Is there anyway I could retrieve it????Please advice

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Osama 3 weeks ago

Thanks a lot. u helped me a lot. "))

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m109rider 2 weeks ago

This was incredibly helpful.

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LeslieTr 16 hours ago

Worked great; my Palm did an early am sync & resulted in 2x contacts. Wasn't looking forward to

editing them one at a time. Start to finish this was a time saver !

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