How to merge Outlook email contacts

How duplicate contacts can occur

If your contacts have different work and personal email addresses, they can be listed with the same contact name but show up as two separate entries. An address book will have provisions for multiple email addresses under the same contact name, which makes it easy to determine where your message should go.

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Additionally, synchronizing contacts can create duplicates. This can happen across apps such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, as well as synchronization between laptops and mobile devices. Depending on how your contacts are listed across these platforms, their names can differ (e.g. Stephen Jones, Steve Jones, or Steve J.) and still represent the same contact.

Lastly, manually typing in contacts can lead to misspellings. These can sometimes be automatically saved as new contacts. It’s important to go through your address book regularly to purge duplicate or misspelled contacts and avoid confusion down the line.

How to merge Outlook contacts

Outlook’s advanced organizational features can automatically process contacts, but it’s worth combing through your contacts and keeping them efficient. The following process uses Outlook and Excel and saves your contacts as a spreadsheet that you can edit and reimport back to Outlook.

Here’s how you can manually merge your contacts:

• Make a backup. Export your contacts to Excel by using the Import and Export Wizard.
• Create a new Contacts folder. In Outlook Contacts, right click on Contacts in the left panel and select New Folder. Give it a temporary name, such as “Duplicates.”
• Move your contacts to this new folder. Press CTRL+A to select all your contacts, then drag them into this new folder.
• Export your contacts to Excel. Go back to the Import and Export Wizard, under the File menu. Select Export to File and a destination to save them to, and your contacts will be saved as a .csv file.
• Open your Contacts file in Excel. Here, you’ll see your contacts organized in columns, sorted by first and last names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
• Go through the spreadsheet and remove duplicate contacts. From here, you can scroll through and easily find and edit duplicate names, misspellings, and other anomalies. For a time-saving shortcut, you can combine duplicate rows in one and still keep unique data with these simple steps.
• Save and reimport to Outlook. In the Import and Export Wizard, select Import from another program or file and navigate to your .csv file. Upload it to your main Contacts folder.
• Combine contacts automatically in Outlook. Bring the contacts you created in your temporary “Duplicates” folder back to your main Contacts folder by selecting them all and dragging. Here, Outlook will automatically detect duplicate contacts and will highlight them in a pop-up alert. You can Update All of your contacts with just one click or save these contacts as new ones.

And you’re done! When you have a lot of contacts, navigating through them can seem intimidating—but these organizational tips will save you time and stress in the long run.