De-duplicating contacts in Outlook
If you’ve found that you have duplicates of your contacts inside Outlook for any reason, you can follow the instructions in this article to attempt to remove and de-duplicate them easily.
- Create a new contacts folder in Outlook
- Navigate to the contacts pane (hotkey Ctrl+3)
- Right-click on a contacts folder and click New Folder…
- Enter the name for the new contacts folder (named Duplicates for this example) then click OK to create it
- You should see it listed in the contacts pane now
- Open the contacts folder with the duplicates inside it and select all of your contacts (hotkey Ctrl+A)
- Press Ctrl+Shift+V to bring up the move contacts prompt, select the new contacts folder you created (named Duplicates in this example) then click OK to move the contacts
- Select the new contacts folder you just moved the contacts into, then select all the contacts inside (hotkey Ctrl+A), then press Ctrl+Shift+V to bring up the move contacts prompt and choose your original contacts folder and click OK
- You’ll be prompted if you wish to merge/update data or create new contacts – choose Update information of selected Contact then click Update All
- Select your main contacts folder in the contacts pane, most if not all of your duplicated contacts should now be merged and de-duplicated
Creating a new contacts folder (1)
Creating a new contacts folder (2)
Selecting all contacts
Moving contacts to another folder
Selecting all contacts after moving them
Moving all contacts back to the original folder
The prompt to merge duplicate contacts
The de-duplicated list of contacts
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