Merging Contact Data

[Ricky Smith]

I've got a client who needs to figure out what all his contacts are and remove duplicates.

Basically he's got a MacBook Air, iPad, iPhone and another MacBook Pro. The iPhone and iPad have 11,000 contacts where as his Laptops have about 3,000. About 1,500 are actual contacts the rest have been duplicated many many times and some are automatically added by the pesky email where it creates a contact every time you e-mail someone.

What methods have you guys used in the past? He's syncing both via the cable and mobile me which is where the big issue started. I told him basically we need to get at least one device with the correct contact info. But I can't see any easy way to fix this as there's so many repeats and he has said the Sync Merge / Edit doesn't work for him cause it doesn't always merge the correct info.

Is there an app (paid or not) that will do a better job?

 

[Menel]

Gmail contacts have amazing duplication detect and merge function in my personal experience.

 

[Ricky Smith]

He's got a GMail account (I'm working on getting him setup on just one "cloud"). So if we went with g-mail what would be the best way to import everything TO gMail from his iPad, iPhone and Macs.

 

[Menel]

CSV files.

 

[Ricky Smith]

CSV files.

How is he going to export a CSV file from his iPad and iPhone? I need to take the individual contacts from each device first, so I can't just sync the iPhone with the Mac and have it overwrite / merge the contacts on the Mac.

 

[mikethebigo]

How is he going to export a CSV file from his iPad and iPhone? I need to take the individual contacts from each device first, so I can't just sync the iPhone with the Mac and have it overwrite / merge the contacts on the Mac.

There's an app for that. I got one for like 2 bucks called "ContactsTool", it exports all your contacts in a number of formats and then lets you email it to yourself. You can also export individual contacts at a time.

 

[Menel]

How is he going to export a CSV file from his iPad and iPhone? I need to take the individual contacts from each device first, so I can't just sync the iPhone with the Mac and have it overwrite / merge the contacts on the Mac.

You can import multiple csv.

Export both macs to csv, upload to google.

Then sync both individually and export eaxh and upload to google.

Sounds like you will have 4 veey large csv files.

Then run duplicate detect, and then merge.

Then either keep using goopgle, or export and import back into just mobileme/icloud.

 

[Ricky Smith]

Alright so we made sure to disable all other methods of syncing wether over the wire, wifi, MobileMe or other scenarios. We imported and made one master contact list on GMail under My Contacts. This worked fine for a week or so but now it's duplicating once again. He's got an iPad and an iPhone syncing. Both are ONLY syncing with gMail.

Ideas?