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CRM Data

Finding and merging duplicate contacts

The duplicate banner, the Merge Contacts tool, choosing which record survives, and merging a lot of pairs at once.

Last updated October 14, 2026

The same person gets entered twice — once from an enquiry, once from a list, once by a rep in a hurry. Two records means half the history each, and the rep looking at the wrong one thinks nobody has called.

Two ways to find them

A banner on the contact when the CRM thinks it has spotted a likely duplicate.
Merge Contacts, under Tools in a tribe, which lists every suspected pair.

Merging a pair

You choose which record is merged from and which is merged into. The record you merge into survives; the other one is folded into it and its history comes across.

Keep the record with the most history — the one with the calls, the notes and the deals — even if the other one has a tidier name. Names are easy to fix afterwards; history is not.

Merging a lot at once

The Merge all button at the top of Merge Contacts works through every pair currently listed, not just the page you can see. Narrow the list first with the confidence and match-reason filters — pairs must match every reason you select, so the more you tick the more confident the list becomes.

Set the filters so the list shows only the pairs you are happy to merge.
Select Merge all. The Merge All Matching Pairs dialog tells you how many pairs will be merged.
Select the red Merge … Pairs button, which shows the same number, to start, or Cancel to go back.

The merge then runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back. While it runs, a panel above the list of pairs shows how many pairs have been merged out of the total, how many could not be merged, and a progress bar, and it updates itself every few seconds. When the run finishes the panel says so and the list of pairs reloads. Only one bulk merge runs in a tribe at a time: the Merge all button is unavailable while one is in progress, and if somebody else starts one you are shown its progress instead of starting a second.

IF A BULK MERGE DOES NOT FINISH

Some pairs may be counted as failed. Those two contacts are left as they were, the rest carry on merging, and the panel says that some pairs could not be merged. They stay in the list, so you can try them again one at a time afterwards; if a pair still will not merge, contact support and name the two contacts. If every pair in a batch fails, or too many pairs fail overall, the run stops and the panel says it stopped before it finished. A very large run can also stop at its batch limit; select Merge all again to carry on from where it stopped.

A MERGE CANNOT BE UNDONE

Two records become one permanently. Review a bulk merge before running it, and when a pair looks wrong, dismiss it rather than merging — a dismissed pair stops being suggested.

Stopping them happening

Search before creating a contact by hand.
Include email addresses in imported files wherever you can.
Run the merge tool after every big import, while you still remember what you loaded.

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