Gmail eases duplicate contacts problem

Gmail now lets you merge multiple contacts.

(Credit: Google/CNET News)

One of my beefs with Gmail, a service I otherwise like, is its propensity to create duplicate contact entries for the same person without any action on my part.

I'm not sure if this is part of its internal workings for identifying contacts, an issue synchronizing with iPhones and Exchange, or something else, but it's annoying. On more than one occasion I've had to recombine my own entry back down into one contact, and I've had to do the same with my wife's entry, my parents' entries, and others.

Of course, there are legitimate occasions when Gmail might have multiple entries for the same person, such as when a friend whose personal e-mail address you use then e-mails you from her work address.

Google now offers to treat the symptom, if not the disease. There's a new "Merge these 2 contacts..." link that appears when you select multiple contacts. Clicking on it presents a unified entry that you can save, modify, or cancel as you see fit.

(Via the unofficial Google Operating System Blog.)

[chinauec]

thanks

[tswann01]

great news, as long as the updates flow back to my blackberry ... this has been my biggest single headache with synchronizing

[spiffy1001]

I went to gmail then to contacts, I selected two names and I did not get this option. Where exactly are you going for this?

[Shankland]

I'm using the regular contacts system. It's common for new Gmail features to take two days or so to spread to all users. Try again later.

[logangreer]

You know a lot of Bills.

[Shankland]

Yes. Though at least in Gmail contacts' eyes, one fewer as of this morning.

[bogeegee]

This is great. I have been waiting for this feature...Now all we need is a way to sync contacts.

[vanax]

I have the same name/address duplication problem with Yahoo mail. I do no syncing at all. It does not make sense.

To avoid the duplicating the outgoing mails, I have to laboriously copy all of the contacts into a word processing program, get rid of the many duplicates by hand, and save that file. Then I copy the list of single emails, and paste it into the CC field in the Yahoo email letter. I see no other way.

Any other fixes out there? Cheers.

[nixermac]

I have been having trouble with google contacts for a long time. The sync with AddressBook had never been easy. Finally I did get it all synced up with some entries still different between the two. But the most amusing is I have 466 contacts in my google contact and when I select them all it shows 463 selected. Not sure where the 3 vanish. I do see 466 contacts in my AddressBook. Frankly i trust my local TimeMachine backup more than the google sync. Fact is the yahoo contacts sync better.