How to delete duplicate contacts on iPhone 5?

Subu · Jan 20, 2013

Hi

While trying to import contacts from windows / outlook etc to iPhone I seem to have duplicated contacts

So I have something like this

Name.................Phone#
-----------------------------
subu's dad...........1234567890
subu's dad1.........1234567890
subu's dad2.........1234567890
...and so on

so you would notice that the phone #s are the same but the identifying name is different

I wish to retain one entry here and delete the rest

How do I delete duplicates without loosing original data ?

thanks in advance for all your answers

KillerTaco · Jan 20, 2013

Subu said:
Name.................Phone#
-----------------------------
subu's dad...........1234567890
subu's dad1.........1234567890
subu's dad2.........1234567890
...and so on

so you would notice that the phone #s are the same but the identifying name is different

I wish to retain one entry here and delete the rest

Tap the contact you would like to delete, hit edit, and then scroll down and hit delete contact.

I'm assuming they are separate contacts and not multiple numbers on one contact?

Subu · Jan 20, 2013

KillerTaco said:
Tap the contact you would like to delete, hit edit, and then scroll down and hit delete contact.

I'm assuming they are separate contacts and not multiple numbers on one contact?

Thanks for the reply

I should have been clear earlier

* I know how to delete this one by one *, but am looking for a easier way to mark multiple contacts and delete at one go

I have 300+ duplicates :-( !!

KillerTaco · Jan 20, 2013

I'm looking at my phone (running iOS 6) and my mom's iPhone 5 and it appears to me that there is no way to do what you're asking.

Weaselboy · Jan 20, 2013

Subu said:
Hi

While trying to import contacts from windows / outlook etc to iPhone I seem to have duplicated contacts

So I have something like this

Name.................Phone#
-----------------------------
subu's dad...........1234567890
subu's dad1.........1234567890
subu's dad2.........1234567890
...and so on

so you would notice that the phone #s are the same but the identifying name is different

I wish to retain one entry here and delete the rest

How do I delete duplicates without loosing original data ?

thanks in advance for all your answers

What I would do is use one of the free apps in the app store to export all the entires as a VCF file (search VCF in the store), then delete the entire address book on the phone. Then on OS X make a temp dummy login account and import the VCF file to contacts (address book). Then use the find duplicates menu entry to clean up the entries. When you are done export as VCF then email that file to the phone and open it in the mail message. That will import the new, cleaned up address book.

Subu · Jan 20, 2013

Weaselboy said:
What I would do is use one of the free apps in the app store to export all the entires as a VCF file (search VCF in the store), then delete the entire address book on the phone. Then on OS X make a temp dummy login account and import the VCF file to contacts (address book). Then use the find duplicates menu entry to clean up the entries. When you are done export as VCF then email that file to the phone and open it in the mail message. That will import the new, cleaned up address book.

Terrific. I've used a backup utility to create a VCF file and mailed that to myself

I do not have OS X so what's the next best ? how does one convert the VCF into a list or csv file or something where one can view contacts as a list and sort + delete duplicates

TIA

Weaselboy · Jan 20, 2013

Subu said:
Terrific. I've used a backup utility to create a VCF file and mailed that to myself

I do not have OS X so what's the next best ? how does one convert the VCF into a list or csv file or something where one can view contacts as a list and sort + delete duplicates

TIA

Yep... that would work too. This site will convert a VCF to CSV then just drop the CSV into Excel.

I don't what apps you have (I assume you are on Windows), but another option might be to install the free Thunderbird then add an extension like this to fix the dups... then export back out as a VCF?

Subu · Jan 20, 2013

Subu said:
Terrific. I've used a backup utility to create a VCF file and mailed that to myself

I do not have OS X so what's the next best ? how does one convert the VCF into a list or csv file or something where one can view contacts as a list and sort + delete duplicates

TIA

I do have MS Outlook

That however has the same set of contacts (though all are NOT duplicated) !!

Weaselboy · Jan 20, 2013

Subu said:
I do have MS Outlook

That however has the same set of contacts (though all are NOT duplicated) !!

Ahh... okay. So Outlook has the contacts you really want (not jacked up or dup'd?). You could just export from Outlook to a VCF file and email that to the iPhone and click the file to import. After you have deleted all contacts from the phone of course.

Subu · Jan 20, 2013

Weaselboy said:
Ahh... okay. So Outlook has the contacts you really want (not jacked up or dup'd?). You could just export from Outlook to a VCF file and email that to the iPhone and click the file to import. After you have deleted all contacts from the phone of course.

Thanks a ton Weaselboy

You've been a great help

This is what I've done so far

1. Used an app called EC backup on iPhone. that's free as of now
2. converted my apple iPhone contacts to VCF, mailed it to myself, opened it on my windows PC
3. tried to use MS outlook, but realised that does not import VCF , read around the net, used windows address book , imported the VCF file (with duplicates etc) into the windows address book
4. Windows address book itself does a great job of warning me of duplicates etc ... so some filtering is possible there,
5. but still IMHO some dupli / triplicates escape [# 5 is purely IMHO]
6. Then used windows address book to export the contacts (with some duplicates) to CSV
7. open the CSV file in XL and do whatever filtering needed
---------- now I am at this stage ------------------

Weaselboy and other folks

So any help in tracing the route back .... CSV to iPhone would be very much appreciated

One thought - create a fresh gmail account, import cleaned up CSV contacts to the gmail account and then synch to iPhone

However I feel there should be better ways ...

Any help would be most appreciated

TIA

Weaselboy · Jan 21, 2013

Subu said:
So any help in tracing the route back .... CSV to iPhone would be very much appreciated

One thought - create a fresh gmail account, import cleaned up CSV contacts to the gmail account and then synch to iPhone

However I feel there should be better ways ...

Any help would be most appreciated.

You could import the CSV to GMail, then export it back out of GMail as a VCF.

I also see this app to do the CSV import, but I have not used it myself.

Subu · Jan 21, 2013

Subu said:
Thanks a ton Weaselboy

You've been a great help

This is what I've done so far

1. Used an app called EC backup on iPhone. that's free as of now
2. converted my apple iPhone contacts to VCF, mailed it to myself, opened it on my windows PC
3. tried to use MS outlook, but realised that does not import VCF , read around the net, used windows address book , imported the VCF file (with duplicates etc) into the windows address book
4. Windows address book itself does a great job of warning me of duplicates etc ... so some filtering is possible there,
5. but still IMHO some dupli / triplicates escape [# 5 is purely IMHO]
6. Then used windows address book to export the contacts (with some duplicates) to CSV
7. open the CSV file in XL and do whatever filtering needed
---------- now I am at this stage ------------------

Weaselboy and other folks

So any help in tracing the route back .... CSV to iPhone would be very much appreciated

One thought - create a fresh gmail account, import cleaned up CSV contacts to the gmail account and then synch to iPhone

However I feel there should be better ways ...

Any help would be most appreciated

TIA

I've got stuck with CSV !!

Looks like CSV opened in XL drops the leading Zeros which is essential in all international #s; I suspect it is also dropping the "+ " sign on many #s

So IF I have to get back to something sane, how do I move from CSV to something that will NOT drop the digits !! ??

TIA

Weaselboy · Jan 21, 2013

Subu said:
I've got stuck with CSV !!

Looks like CSV opened in XL drops the leading Zeros which is essential in all international #s; I suspect it is also dropping the "+ " sign on many #s

So IF I have to get back to something sane, how do I move from CSV to something that will NOT drop the digits !! ??

TIA

Hmm... that's odd. Sounds like an issue with Excel.

How about trying out the free office suite LibreOffice and see if that works better. It looks like it can also import CSV files.

Subu · Jan 22, 2013

Weaselboy said:
Hmm... that's odd. Sounds like an issue with Excel.

How about trying out the free office suite LibreOffice and see if that works better. It looks like it can also import CSV files.

thanks everyone

I finally managed it

synching the contacts IS a key issue

IF anyone is interested please post

rich9644 · Jan 22, 2013

Sebu,

I'm definitely interested. Please advise on how you did it.

Subu · Jan 22, 2013

rich9644 said:
Sebu,

I'm definitely interested. Please advise on how you did it.

Could you please outline your problem ? before I start off ....

IF your problem is duplicate contacts, then please start with this post of mine https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/16700384/

IF your problem is something else please let me know and I'd be glad to try

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How to delete duplicate contacts on iPhone 5?

Subu

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KillerTaco

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Subu

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KillerTaco

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Weaselboy

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Subu

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Subu

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Subu

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Subu

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