Find and merge duplicate contacts
Four ways to catch duplicate contacts, side by side, and merge them without losing any history.
Two entries for the same person split their history in half. Merging puts it back together.
Why it matters
When someone ends up as two contacts, maybe one from an email thread and one you added by hand, their notes, interactions, and history get split between the two. Search gets less reliable, your sense of the relationship gets murkier, and it only gets worse the longer it sits. Cleaning up duplicates keeps your network accurate as it grows, without you having to comb through it manually.
How it works
Relatable watches for people who are probably the same person, based on similar names and overlapping emails or phones, and puts the likely matches in front of you to confirm. You decide, side by side, whether they're really the same contact and which details to keep. Nothing merges without you approving it.
How to use it
There are a few ways to get to a duplicate review:
- From the Database page: if you have any, a Duplicates button appears next to the search box, showing the count, like "63 Duplicates". Open it to start reviewing.
- From a contact's profile: if Relatable spots a likely duplicate, it flags it at the top of that person's profile, and opens the same review from there.
- While reviewing your uncategorized contacts: if one of them is clearly someone you already have, merge them straight into the existing contact instead of adding a new one.
- In bulk: check off two or more contacts anywhere in your Database and choose Merge from Bulk Actions. Pick which one should be the main contact, and the rest merge into it.
However you get there, the Duplicates page and profile reviews work the same way:
- Compare side by side: each suggested pair shows both records' fields next to each other, so you can see exactly what's different.
- Pick which fields to keep: choose the version of each field you want on the surviving contact before merging.
- Merge or dismiss: approve to combine them into one contact, or dismiss if they're genuinely two different people.
Good to know
- Merging keeps the surviving contact's full history: notes, interactions, and reminders combine from both records rather than one side winning outright.
- Relatable also checks for likely duplicates the moment you're about to add someone from your uncategorized queue, so you can catch it before a duplicate ever gets created.
- Dismissing a suggestion tells Relatable these are two different people, and it won't ask about that specific pair again unless something changes.
- This review only covers duplicates. Nothing here touches or overwrites details you've already entered on a contact outside of what you explicitly choose to merge.