iOS 16 Lets You Easily Fix Duplicate Contacts

[dnta11]

I, too, have had my APPLE system double (even triple once) my contacts. And I have 2816 cards right now (which is a double batch, so really about have of that.). I have searched EVERYWHERE and wasted over an hour with Apple on the phone to find out if this merge only merges the 'top essential' data or DOES IT INCLUDE THE CONTACTS NOTES SECTION. I have LOTS of need info in the Notes section and not a single Senior Advisor could answer that question! Anyone here? NO GUESSES PLEASE. Only hardcore KNOWING! Thanks!

 

[dk001]

I, too, have had my APPLE system double (even triple once) my contacts. And I have 2816 cards right now (which is a double batch, so really about have of that.). I have searched EVERYWHERE and wasted over an hour with Apple on the phone to find out if this merge only merges the 'top essential' data or DOES IT INCLUDE THE CONTACTS NOTES SECTION. I have LOTS of need info in the Notes section and not a single Senior Advisor could answer that question! Anyone here? NO GUESSES PLEASE. Only hardcore KNOWING! Thanks!

I have had duplicate Contacts many with Notes. While I have found a few errors, it does a decent job of merging including Notes and other added fields. You will find that sometimes, especially if you have duplicate iCloud contact that you may need to execute it a couple of times.

 

[jkjkjk3]

NO way I'm doing it. I use iMessage on my Mac too... contacts are all messed up. I think this will just mess it up more.

 

[jkjkjk3]

I have had duplicate Contacts many with Notes. While I have found a few errors, it does a decent job of merging including Notes and other added fields. You will find that sometimes, especially if you have duplicate iCloud contact that you may need to execute it a couple of times.

NO way I'm doing it. I use iMessage on my Mac too... contacts are all messed up. I think this will just mess it up more. If anyone can say that it wont mess up imessages linked to specific contact then I'd consider...but not worth it. Just search the phone for the contact, better to get 5 results that are complete than 1 that is not complete.

 

[dk001]

NO way I'm doing it. I use iMessage on my Mac too... contacts are all messed up. I think this will just mess it up more. If anyone can say that it wont mess up imessages linked to specific contact then I'd consider...but not worth it. Just search the phone for the contact, better to get 5 results that are complete than 1 that is not complete.

I have since moved my main Contact list to Proton Mail.
DO what you feel is right for you.

 

[mjs916]

NO way I'm doing it. I use iMessage on my Mac too... contacts are all messed up. I think this will just mess it up more.

I have only used the iOS one once but Google contacts is pretty good at merging duplicates. Periodically I clean up my contacts and export from outlook and iCloud, upload into Google and have it clean them up. Then I import into iCloud.

 

[jordii]

Only works if duplicates are found in your iCloud list. If you have duplicates across multiple lists (non-iCloud), it fails.
I have contacts that were imported from Gmail as well as iCloud so I now have 171 duplicates.
But the merge function fails due to the duplicates coming from different sources.

Correct. Suprised more people aren't complaining about this. Did you figure out a solution? I'm on the verge of exporting all lists to VCF and laboriously merging via text editor into one dupe-less list.

 

[AlixSPQR]

Great function since I already have had three batches of duplicates to sort out, since I migrated from Google to iCloud a few weeks ago. The additional Contacts list ”card” is also created automatically, over and over again. I suppose iCloud can't handle that I log in on different units, platforms, and OS'es. Only drawback is that iMessage on my main iPhone mostly show numbers now, not names. A restart fixed that last time. Here we go again... 🤞🏻