Daily use

Duplicates and merging records

Over time the same customer gets entered twice, through an import, through a form and by hand. The Duplicates screen groups records that share the same key and lets you merge everything into a single record, pulling in the empty fields from the copies and repointing activities and links. A merge cannot be undone, so it is worth checking first.

A database with duplicates spoils everything downstream: the report counts twice, the campaign sends two emails, and the latest conversation ends up on the wrong record. The Duplicates screen exists so you can settle this in bulk without erasing history: the record that stays inherits what it was missing and receives every activity and link from the copies.

How to open it

Open the object's list, for example Contacts.
In the More menu at the top of the screen, click Duplicates.
Just below the title, the screen tells you which field the records were grouped by.

There is a second route: under Settings, on the data quality screen, each object shows how many duplicate groups it has, and the number is a link to this same screen.

Which field the system groups by

If the object has an email field, that is the key. This is the case for Contacts and Leads.
If it has no email, the key is the name field. This is the case for Companies.
If it has neither, the object's first text field is used.
For Products the key is the code, because the same code is the catalog's identity and the name can repeat across variants.
Matching ignores upper and lower case and trims spaces at the ends. An empty value never forms a group.
If the object has no field that can serve as a key, the screen says so instead of showing groups.

Merging

In each group, the header shows the value that brought the records together and how many there are.
In the list, select which record will be the master. That is the one that stays.
Check the others: all of them will be merged into the master.
Click Merge into the selected one.
The group is replaced by a confirmation of how many records were merged.

What happens during a merge

The master keeps every value it already had: nothing of its own is overwritten.
Each empty field on the master is filled in with the value from the first duplicate that has that field filled.
Every activity linked to the duplicates now points to the master.
Any lookup field, on any object, that pointed to a duplicate now points to the master.
The duplicate records are removed permanently. They do not go to the Trash and cannot be restored.

Example: At Lumen Engineering, the analyst opened Contacts and clicked Duplicates. The top of the screen read Grouped by Email. One group held three records for contact@paulistabuilders.com: one with a phone number and a job title, one with only a name, and a third with a blank job title but four logged activities. She chose the most complete record as the master and clicked Merge into the selected one. The master picked up the job title it was missing, received the four activities from the third record, and the other two were gone.

Permissions and limits

To see the groups you need read access to the object; to merge you need write access.
The scan considers the object's five thousand most recent records. On larger databases, work in rounds and repeat after each cleanup.
Groups with more duplicates appear first.
A merge has no undo. Check the master before clicking.
If your company operates with several companies in a group, a notice may tell you a similar record exists in another company. In that case the system only flags it and offers to request access: it never shows you the other company's data.

Common questions

I merged the wrong ones, can I go back? No. The duplicates are permanently deleted and never pass through the Trash.
Two different customers use the same company email and the system puts them together. Do not merge: different records that share a key show up in the same group, and the decision is yours. Changing the email on one of them breaks the grouping.
How do I stop duplicates at the source? On import, choose a key field under Duplicates and say what to do when an existing record is found. Public lead capture also avoids repeats by email.

Open this article inside the system →