Help Me Find My Duplicates!

November 3, 2007 7:23 AM

Because of a problem with my Entourage database I now have lots of duplicate email addresses in my address book. I thought I could see the duplicates by going through my contact list but they are not listed next to each other. I can search each email address and it will display the dups but that would mean I would need to know which email addresses are duplicated. Clicking on the name field does not place the dups together in the list. Is there a simpler way to find the duplicates?
posted by Taken Outtacontext to computers & internet (2 comments total)

Yup.

Well, I think so... can you output all your contacts to an Excel file? If so, export, sort by the appropriate column, delete your dupes & merge as necessary.

Then delete all contacts from within Entourage, and reimport the Excel file (MAKE BACKUPS FIRST. I learned that the very hard way...), and voila.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 7:55 AM on November 3, 2007

That worked. Thanks.

A few details: here's a web site that tells you how to backup your Entourage data: www.ups.edu/x10827.xml. It's pretty straightforward. When I exported my address book and opened it in Excel it actually had sorted the data so I could easily tell the duplicates.

One other thing to be careful of: when I exported my contacts it didn't seem to export my mailing lists (which were listed in my contacts). When I wanted to import my edited contact list back in, I had to be careful not to delete any mailing lists (as they would not be imported back in).
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 11:16 AM on November 3, 2007