How to Remove Duplicate Contacts in Outlook in 3 Simple Ways
Is your MS Outlook cluttered with duplicate contacts? Then it’s essential to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook. So, this article will discover the best manual and automated solutions for eliminating duplicate contacts. If you are a user of MS Outlook, then you might know that these duplicate contacts make your address book cluttered and disorganised. As a result, it becomes difficult to search for an important contact in list. However, this guide will help you organise and clean your contact lists using both manual and advanced methods.
Why Do Duplicate Contacts Appear in Outlook?
Before we get into the solutions, let’s understand why these duplicate contacts come up in Outlook:
- Importing the Same Contacts Multiple Times
If Do not import duplicates option is enabled, then customers might import contacts from CSV, PST or VCF files more than once, which can cause Outlook to create duplicates for each import.
- Synchronizing Outlook with Multiple Services at the Same Time
When Outlook is connected to iCloud, Google Contacts, Microsoft Exchange, or other third-party services, your contacts will sync from these with different locations. Each of these locations may change contact information, and Outlook will treat it as a new contact, causing duplication.
- Adding the Same Contact Manually Multiple Times
Sometimes, a user could forget that a contact already existed and add a new contact manually. But Outlook doesn’t notify users of duplicate entries in Outlook, which leads to the problem of duplicity of contacts in Outlook’s address book.
- Third-Party Applications Adding Contacts
Some CRM programs, email marketing tools and contact management software that integrate with Outlook will sync contact information. If the software has bad configurations or aggressive syncing rules to sync contacts, it can surely create duplicates of the same contact.
No worries, let’s walk through the quick ways to Remove duplicate Contacts Outlook Mac.
3 Proven Steps to Remove Duplicate Contacts in Outlook
Here are some ways to delete duplicate contacts in Outlook, which include both free manual and an automated method:
- Manually Review and Delete Duplicate Contacts
- Use the Export and Import with Excel Method
- Use a Professional Automated Tool
Let’s understand these easiest ways in brief:
Note: Imagine you’ve discovered some of your important contacts as duplicates, so in that case, you can take an action like merge duplicate contacts in Outlook for Mac instead of eliminating them.
#1 Manually Review and Delete Duplicate Contacts
It is one of most basic methods to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook. Steps given below:
Steps to Use:
- Open Outlook and navigate to People/Contact view.
- Sort contacts by email address, full name, etc.
- Manually scan and identify duplicate contacts.
- Choose those duplicates that you don’t want and delete them manually.
- No installment of other additional tools are required to eliminate duplicate Contacts in Outlook.
- It gives full control over what gets deleted.
- It is very time-taking process to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook manually.
- Not feasible for deleting on a large contact address book.
#2 Use the Export and Import with Excel Method
If you’re working on multiple lists, then you can remove duplicate contacts Outlook Mac in bulk using the Excel remove duplicate feature:
Steps to Use:
- Export contact list from Outlook in .csv file.
- Use remove duplicate feature to eliminate duplicate contacts in CSV file.
- You can save output file and import it again into Outlook.
- It is a great solution if you’re working on large lists.
- Excel allows users to use sorting and filtering options to make it easier.
- Before using this it should required some technical skills.
- It might cause a formatting error if it’s not done in a proper manner.
Pro Tip: At the time of exporting contacts, when the primary goal is to obtain email addresses for marketing lists, you can follow our time saving guide for the most efficient extraction process.
#3 Use Best Automated Tool to Eliminate Duplicate Contacts in Outlook
To know how to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook quickly and with accurate results, use SysTools Outlook Duplicate Items Remover, which automatically scans duplicate contacts in the lists and removes them from your address book data efficiently and securely.
It allows users to use advanced filters in specific fields of the list, like name, email address, or phone number. Let’s know more features of this professional method.
Benefits to Delete Duplicate Contacts in Outlook with Duplicate Contacts Clearing Utility
- This automated tool can easily support large data files.
- It can make Outlook remove duplicate contacts in no time.
- You can choose specific criteria to delete duplicate contacts from address lists.
- It ensures that the data which is being eliminated is done so with full accuracy.
- It also keeps the original data intact, which maintains integrity.
- This professional tool has a user-friendly interface, which makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to use.
Read More: How to Remove Duplicate Emails in Outlook
Steps to Eliminate Duplicate Contacts in Outlook Using by Automated Tool
Steps to Use:
- Download and run the aforementioned tool on your system.
- Click Add File or Folder to open your Outlook-supported files.
- It provides users with an option to add files within folder or across folder.
- You can choose any Location to save the cleaned file.
- In select item types, choose Contacts option to eliminate duplicates.
- Click Specific Duplicate Criteria such as name, email address, phone number, etc.
- Click OK to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook.
Bonus Tip to Prevent Duplication Contacts in Outlook
To avoid these duplicate Outlook contacts in future, you can follow these preventive tips:
- Avoid syncing Outlook contacts with several devices simultaneously.
- Every user should check their contacts list status regularly and remove duplicate contacts in Outlook.
- Disable the auto-syncing feature, which might be duplicating contacts by accepting invites.
- Avoid importing the Outlook’s contact lists into a .csv file again & again.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve discussed the best ways to remove duplicate contacts in Outlook using Excel and the built-in feature in Outlook. Moreover, we explained about a professional tool to delete duplicate contacts in Outlook. We also covered advanced tips to prevent duplicate contacts in the future. Choose the methods wisely, but for an effective and reliable result, we recommend using an automated method developed by SysTools.
FAQs on How to Remove Duplicate Contacts in Outlook
Q.1 How Can I Delete Double Contacts in Outlook Automatically?
A. Yes, you can eliminate similar contacts in Outlook by using suggested tool in above article.
Q.2 Can I Restore Deleted Contacts?
A. You can if you’ve taken a backup before removing duplicate contacts.
Q.3 How to Remove Duplicate Contacts Outlook Mac?
A. You can use Outlook’s search and sort feature to do manually or you can use dedicated method mentioned above, both supports Outlook macOS.