Merge Contacts & General Setting - Duplication Preferences

What you'll learn

Common Use Cases

Once you understand duplication preferences and merging, here's what you can start doing right away.

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Turn Off Duplicate Contacts

Set your Contact Duplication Preferences so the same person can't accidentally be created twice from a form, ad, or import.

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Choose How Duplicates Are Found

Decide whether your CRM checks email first or phone first when it looks for an existing contact, based on how your customers usually reach you.

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Spot Duplicates In Your List

Recognize when the same person shows up twice, often because they filled out different forms with a personal email one time and a business email the next.

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Merge Two Records Into One

Combine two duplicate contacts into a single clean record, choosing a master and confirming every field along the way.

Key definitions

Terms worth knowing

Two or more contact records that actually represent the same person. This often happens when someone fills out a form with a personal email and phone number, then later fills out another form with their business email or business phone number.

A general setting in your Business Profile that controls whether your CRM allows duplicate contacts, and which piece of information, email or phone, it checks first to find an existing contact.

The bulk action that combines two selected contacts into one. The selected info merges into the master record. Any remaining fields, including appointments, payments, orders, and invoices, default to the master record's value, while courses, community groups, and products combine information from both records.

The contact record you choose to keep as the primary version during a merge. Its remaining values win by default, so it's important to select the record with the most accurate or most complete information as your master before you confirm the merge.

The section of the merge screen that shows only the data points where the two contacts disagree, like two different phone numbers or two different lead sources. This is where you decide which value to keep for each field.

The full view of every field on both contacts, including your regular contact fields and any custom fields filled out through your forms. Reviewing all fields lets you double-check the merge before it's final.

The main phone number or email address on a merged contact. If the other record had an additional phone number or email, it's kept on the merged contact as an additional entry rather than being lost.

"I think that's a cluttered database, so I strongly recommend turning the allow duplicate contact off, and setting it to check the primary way you actually communicate with your contacts."

How it works

Setting Duplication Preferences And Merging Contacts

How the same person ends up twice

You can't always help it. Maybe a contact came in through a Facebook ad or filled out a website form using their personal Gmail and home number. Later, they came back to your website and used their business email or business phone number instead. That contact now exists as two records because they gave you two different pieces of data to identify them by. That's exactly what merging is meant to fix.

Settings, Business Profile, general settings

To find your duplication preferences, go into Settings, then into your Business Profile. Scroll down to the bottom right, and you'll see the general settings section. What you're looking for there is Contact Duplication Preferences, the control that decides whether your CRM allows a duplicate contact at all.

Turn duplicates off, and choose email or phone first

If duplicate contacts are not allowed and someone tries to save a new contact with an email or phone number that already exists, your CRM shows a message that the location does not allow duplicated contacts. You also choose whether it finds existing contacts by checking email first or phone first. If you primarily talk to customers by phone and know those numbers are always accurate, set phone first and email second. If email is your primary way of reaching people, set email first and phone second. If you turn Allow Duplicate Contacts on instead, every one of these checks disappears, which means the same business could submit five or six different forms and create five or six duplicate contacts. Keeping duplicates turned off is the best way to keep a clean database.

Check both records to bring up bulk actions

When you spot the same contact appearing twice in your list, check the box next to each of the two records. Once two contacts are checked, you'll see a message confirming two contacts are selected, and your bulk actions will appear. From there, select the More option and look for Merge. Selecting Merge takes you into the merge screen for those two records.

Pick your master, then confirm every field

On the merge screen, start with Fields With Different Values, the fields where the two records disagree, like two different phone numbers or two different lead sources. Decide which value should win for each one, and make sure you select the correct master record first, since the master's remaining values are what carry over. Then check All Fields to review every regular and custom field on both contacts before you confirm. Once you select Merge Contacts, the two records become one, keeping the correct primary phone and email while storing the other number or address as an additional entry instead of losing it.

Tips

Worth remembering

Set your Contact Duplication Preferences early, before your list grows to pages and pages of contacts. It's much easier to prevent duplicates than to clean them up later.
Choose email first or phone first based on how your customers actually reach you, not just by default. If phone numbers are always accurate for your business, put phone first.
When you spot a duplicate, confirm with the contact which phone number or email they want to be reached on before you merge, if you have the chance to ask.
Always double-check which record you've set as the master before confirming a merge. The master's remaining values are what carry over to the final contact.
Cleaning up duplicates is especially useful right after importing a list of contacts, since imports are a common source of duplicate records.

Check yourself

Quick Knowledge Check

Four quick questions on this lesson. One attempt each, and the answer is revealed either way.

0 of 4 answered

Where do you go to find your Contact Duplication Preferences?

What happens if you try to save a new contact with an email that already exists while duplicates are not allowed?

How do you start a merge on two contacts you've identified as duplicates?

On the merge screen, what does choosing a master record determine?

Apply it

Try this with your favorite AI

🔒Decide my duplication preference setup

You are helping me decide how to set up Contact Duplication Preferences in my CRM. Here is my situation: - How my contacts usually reach me first: [phone, email, or both] - Where most of my new contacts come from: [website form, Facebook ad, referral, import, etc.] - Whether I've had duplicate contact problems before: [describe] Based on that, tell me whether I should allow or block duplicate contacts, and whether I should check email first or phone first when looking for existing contacts. Explain your reasoning in plain terms.

🔄Build my merge checklist

You are helping me create a simple checklist I can follow every time I merge two duplicate contacts in my CRM. Here is my situation: - The kinds of fields that usually differ between my duplicate contacts: [describe, e.g. phone number, lead source, time zone] - How I usually decide which record should be the master: [describe] Based on that, give me a short, repeatable checklist for picking the right master record, reviewing fields with different values, checking all fields, and confirming the merge without losing any data.