[Solved] Remove contacts duplicate

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Is there a way to detect and merge/remove duplicates ?

I just switched to Cardbook and because of some strange behavior of Gmail, I have a lot (500) of duplicates.

 

Thanks

• This topic was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by CardBook.

[Anonymous]

I used Duplicate Contact Manager plugin but it only gives a list that you have to process manually entry by entry.

[CardBook]

in the CardBook toolbar, there is an hamburger icon at the left, then choose Tools/Search for duplicate contacts… (or right click on your Cardbook address book)

[Anonymous]

Thanks it works indeed. However it was not possible to do a global merge/delete, I had to go one by one.

I ended up merging through an excel file, it’s much easier that way.

It’s a border case though (lot op duplicates), don’t bother changing your excellent add one/plugin !

 

Thanks

[CardBook]

I don’t think that a global merge/delete would be a good option :O)

[jbruggem]

<div class=”bbp-reply-content”>

I don’t think that a global merge/delete would be a good option :O)

</div>

I don’t know about that; but an auto-merge when both sides of an entry are 100% identical would be awesome, and very useful in some use cases.

My use case is the following: I just realized some of my  contacts are missing due to a sync error with my phone; I now want to just re-import a full backup to make sure any missing entry is restored; but this means that all the existing entries now have duplicates. Since they are identical, it shouldn’t require any manual input to remove them !

[ptartist]

So true!  And yet here we are in 2023 and no improvement!  Also Cardbook insists on duplicates by shared email, when I want individual entries by person’s name!  Obviously there is separate info for people who share in email address (cell phones!).

[Chris]

Really? Can you elaborate on this please, @ptartist?

In all my life I never had the same email-address and cellphone number for different persons. I would be really interested about a scenario where this happens.

Unless it’s a company address or number with different respondants … but then again, why seize the same address and number with different names?

And for companies there are other fields …

[ptartist]

<span style=”font-size: large;”>I know several couples who share an email address. Don’t ask me why: strange but true.</span>

<span style=”font-size: large;”>They have separate names, cell phones, and other details… so why does Cardbook want these to be “duplicates”?</span>

[Chris]

so why does Cardbook want these to be “duplicates”?

Because it makes sense to suspect a duplicate in such case?  You are not forced to eliminate one of them, I guess … And in the merge procedure, you have the the option “forget” – chose it and you won’t ever be bothered again.

In the case of the mass duplicates after importing the same set of addresses to the same addressbook (bad mistake imho), I would suggest to have them sorted by name, and then manually delete every second entry. This is probably much faster than the merge process.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by Chris.

[ptartist]

I appreciate this suggestion, and have done this. But with about 150 duplicates, this was so tedious. It would be so very convenient to have a filter for the duplicates tool and/or a way to merge all exact duplicates. I ended up with many due to problems synchronizing from multiple devices. Many exact duplicates, and a few with different labels. But also quite a few  more “false” duplicates due to same email?, home address?, home phone? or other common field; I don’t want to merge people in these cases.

So a lot of extra frustration and delay when I tried to do someone the favor of sharing a phone number that was not synchronized to the device I was using! How we love our technology (some of the time)!

 

[Chris]

I can imagine that this was truly tedious …

I don’t know if it’s feasible to add a function that automatically merges all contacts where all fields except the UID match …

I have had issues with doubles too – from restored (partial) backups, but always made sure to create a separate addressbook for the import of backups. This one, I could then put in offline mode and move an eventually missing contact over to the main addressbook. By doing this, I didn’t get the same address shown twice (or more) when searching for an address, or when composing a mail.

[CardBook]

I do not like to make background actions that the user is not aware of… By the way you have the possibility to merge all the contacts at once in the de-duplication window.

[ptartist]

Good to hear this.  It took me a while to realize that “forget” means that I can deselect & filter out the ones I do NOT want to merge first, then merge the all the real duplicates. This works OK, as I have only about 15 contacts to deselect, and many many that I want to merge.

Thank you

[Author]

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