Removing Duplicates

So, you got started with AddressTwo and immediately decided: "Great, I'll put all my contacts in one place."  You imported from Outlook, you imported your customer spreadsheet from Excel, and you had all of your assistants or staff members do the same.  Now everyone's contacts are in one place.... just one problem: you all knew the same people.

What now?

Go to Admin >> Remove Duplicates.  Here is a handy tool that identifies duplicates in your database and allows you to remove them.  There are a few things to be aware of:

1. It removes them.  It's called the "remove duplicates" tool.  You will have to decide which to delete.  Why?  It's simple: computers will always do a poor job of guessing which set of data you wanted to keep.  HINT: if you want to keep both, the names of the duplicates are hyperlinked to their respective accounts.  Go there and ABSORB together.
2. Determine which one to delete.  If you have just started, and all contacts are new, it doesn't matter.  If you have been using it for quite a while, there could be an important decision to make.  If you have been recording a lot of notes, keep the one with the most history.  NOTE: It's always easier to manually update contact data with more current than it is to manually re-enter previous historical notes.  
3. Know that it is indeed de-duping against the entire database.  The contact to be deleted could indeed be one that another user has created.  That's the reason this is an administrative permission function.  Only admins can reach it.