Merging duplicate contacts in Outlook (or importing duplicates)?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

Hi

I have a tricky problem with Outlook 2003 - maybe someone here could give me
a hand, would be much much appreciated :-)

I need to import a long list of contacts into Outlook (CSV-file). Each line
of the file is one person with contact details (name, first name, title,
street etc.).

However, in this list, many persons are listed more than once, where each
entry does not contain all data, but together all entries give all data (e.g.
the first entry only has the street address, but not phone, whereas the
second entry has phone and e-mail).

When importing this into Outlook, in that case duplicate contacts for each
of these persons are created.

How can I ask Outlook to merge these duplicates into one?

When importing new contact data from a VCF file, Outlook asks me whether I
want to create a duplicate or update the existing contact with the new
imported information.

But it doesn't do that when importing from a CSV file...

Any hints would be much appreciated.

Thans a lot in advance,
greetings

Frank
 
Frank said:
How can I ask Outlook to merge these duplicates into one?
Click to expand...

You cant, as far as I can tell.
When importing new contact data from a VCF file, Outlook asks me
whether I want to create a duplicate or update the existing contact
with the new imported information.

But it doesn't do that when importing from a CSV file...
Click to expand...

When importing from a CSV, your choices are to allow duplicates, to replace
completely the data already in Outlook with the data in the import, or to
skip any item that appears to be a duplicate. There is no merge capability
with CSV import.
 
Hi Brian,

Thanks for your answer!
When importing from a CSV, your choices are to allow duplicates, to replace
completely the data already in Outlook with the data in the import, or to
skip any item that appears to be a duplicate. There is no merge capability
with CSV import.
Click to expand...

Pity... this way, it'll create several duplicates per contact, all with
parts of the contact details, none with all of them. Do you know if there is
a "contact merging" tool for Outlook, which goes through the contact folder
and merges duplicates? I googled for one, but all I found were duplicate
killers, which simply deleted duplicates, not merged their data into one
record.

Thanks again
and best regards

Frank
 
Frank said:
Do you know
if there is a "contact merging" tool for Outlook, which goes through
the contact folder and merges duplicates?
Click to expand...

I do not know, but I've seen mention of several contact managers in these
Outlook newsgroups. One of them may do what you seek.
 
This looks like exactly what I am looking for! Thank you, Jane, and Frank for
starting the whole process off,

Charmaine
 
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