Finding & Merging Duplicates
Find the same person twice, decide field by field what survives, and stop them arriving in the first place.
On this page
1Why duplicates happen
The same person arrives twice: once from a web form with a nickname, once from a marketplace with a different phone, once typed in by someone who didn’t search first. Left alone, duplicates split a contact’s history, send them the same campaign twice, and quietly wreck your reporting.
2Finding them
Open Advanced Filters on the Contacts List and use Find Duplicates. It filters the list to contacts that share one of:
- Email — the strongest signal.
- Name and Phone — for people who use different email addresses.
- Phone — catches a household or a business sharing a line, so read these before merging.
- Address — two records at one property, which may be two genuinely different people.
3Merging
Tick the records that are the same person — at least two — and press Merge. You choose which contact to keep, then decide field by field which value survives: first and last name, cell and secondary phone, email, address, city, state, postal code, plus action plan, sales cycle, lead source and assigned user.
When you confirm, the records you didn’t keep are archived, their tags move to the survivor and their history notes are woven into the survivor’s timeline in date order.
A merge can’t be undone. Restoring an archived record afterwards does not un-merge anything. Read the field-by-field preview before confirming, and be certain the records really are one person — a shared phone number is not proof.
4Merge, Combine or Separate?
| Action | Use when |
|---|---|
| Merge | The records are the same person. You end up with one contact. |
| Combined | They’re different deals for one person. You end up with one contact carrying several opportunities. |
| Separate | The reverse of Combined — split opportunities back into standalone contacts. |
5Stopping them arriving
- Turn on duplicate checking for the API in Settings → API, and for imports in Settings → Contact Profile.
- Tick Check Duplicate on parsers and on marketplace integrations — those sources resend leads often.
- Give the team the habit of searching before creating.