You may find yourself with two contact cards for the same client. Should this occur, you can use the Merge Duplicates tool to combine them.
If you choose to merge two contacts, the Merge Duplicates tool will merge the two contacts’ paperwork from the client binder, the recent history and any service center requests into the main contact. The duplicate contact will be changed to a deleted status and will no longer display in your active clients.
When merging two contacts, the main contact always keeps all of its existing contact data (name, address, phone, email, etc.) even if a field is blank. For example, if the main contact’s middle name is blank, but the duplicate contact has that info, the middle name is not transferred from the duplicate into the main contact during the merge.
Note: All duplicated contacts that are deleted during a merge process are changed to a deleted status. Deleted contacts are not truly deleted. They can still be accessed through the Manage Deleted button in the contact manager. The Manage Deleted feature also allows you to restore deleted contacts. If you restore a contact that was deleted through the Merge Duplicate tools, you will restore just the contact data. The links from that deleted contact to its related 1). paperwork, 2) recent history and 3) service center items were transferred to the main contact during the merge process. So, they will no longer be linked to the deleted contact, even after restoring it.
Merging Contacts
The Merge Duplicates tool is designed to merge one set of contacts at a time. It is not a mass update tool that merges all duplicate contacts through a batch process. For best results, duplicate contacts must be matched up and merged one set at a time.
At the top of the Merge Duplicates screen, you will see three options (Full Name, Social Security and Show All). These are the three ways to match up duplicates and merge contacts. To select one type of duplicate matching, click on the radio button next the type of match you wish to perform.
- Full Name: Displays all contacts where the full name is an exact match in both contacts.
- Social Security (SSN/TID): Displays any contacts that match based on the SSN or TID.
- Show All: This shows you all of your contacts and allows you to combine any two contacts from your contact manager regardless of whether they have any matching data.
- First Contact: This is the drop down that lets you choose the contact that you want to merge any duplicates into. This is your main contact and is the one that will remain after you merge the two contacts. The details section displays some key data points to help you identify if this is the contact you want to work with.
- View Contact: Click on this link to view the main contact card.
- Duplicate Contact: This drop down displays any contacts that match the first contact based upon the category (Full Name, SSN/TID, Show All) that you have chosen. Full names display any contacts with an exact name match. Social Security shows any contacts that match based on SSN or TID numbers. Show All shows every contact in your contact manager allowing you to choose any contact for merging. Show All does not match up the contacts based on any criteria. The details section displays some key data points to help you identify if this is the contact you want to work with.
- View Contact: Click on this to view the duplicate contact card
To merge contacts:
- Select the type of duplicate match (Full Name, Social Security or Show All)
- Choose the main contact from the drop down.
- Choose the duplicate contact from the drop down.
- Click on the perform merge button on the right side of the contact manager.
- The following window will pop up asking you to confirm that you want to merge the two contacts. Click OK
- Next, you will get the following confirmation message. Click OK.
