How do I combine duplicate contacts in Outlook?

[Jeannie Shaw]

I imported an address book from another program into Outlook 2003. After
several tries where the program could not run, I selected do not check for
duplicates. Of course, I now have duplicates but not all the information is
available in both contact/address cards. Is there a way to combine the two
contact entries into one entry/address card? Or do I have to manually input
the information from one into the other and then delete one contact by
contact?

 

[Brian Tillman]

I imported an address book from another program into Outlook 2003.
After several tries where the program could not run, I selected do
not check for duplicates. Of course, I now have duplicates but not
all the information is available in both contact/address cards. Is
there a way to combine the two contact entries into one entry/address
card? Or do I have to manually input the information from one into
the other and then delete one contact by contact?

Outlook does not have that ability. There may be contact tools that can
help. See if something here helps:
http://www.slipstick.com/addins/contacts.asp and
http://www.contactgenie.com/

 

[Jeannie Shaw]

Thank you. It's always good to know that for only two or three or four
hundred dollars and I can purchase another program to get a Microsoft Program
to do what I think it should be able to do to start with. The only viable
option I see is to combine the information one contact at a time by typing
all the information into one contact, saving it and deleting the other.
That's just not worth the time or energy needed.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Thank you. It's always good to know that for only two or three or
four hundred dollars and I can purchase another program to get a
Microsoft Program to do what I think it should be able to do to start
with.

I see several tools on the pages I cited that are a few tens of dollars.

Just because YOU think Outlook should be able to do something doesn't mean
everyone believes that, but let's assume that you're correct. How would you
combine the information? Would a contact item whose creation date is later
than another's creation date take precedence? Would you want ALL of the
data in the newer item to overwrite ALL of the data in the older item, or
would you want only selected fields to overwrite? Perhaps you think only
empty fields in the first item should be filled in from data in the second.
If so, what do you do with the data in the fields that aren't empty? Should
an item you're importing always overwrite the item already in the Contacts
folder? What if the item in the Contacts folder is newer because you've
added it by hand before you decided to import older data? What if there are
some newer and some older contacts in the imported data? Would you want to
always overwrite the existing contacts when importing or ignore those
contacts in the imported data that already have entries in the Contacts
folder? What if the contact in the folder and the contact in the imported
data are identical in every respect except for the business phone number?
How would Outlook know which to use? If Outlook were programmed to combine
items the way YOU want them combined, how does that affect someone else who
wants them combined differently? With all these decisions to make in the
importing process, the program that implements them would be fairly
substantial. I'd rather not have Outlook burdened with that much extra
code. It's complex enough as it is. I'd rather have a separate program
that I can purchase or not.