Merging Duplicate Contacts in iOS 16.1

I have an iPhone 13 that I just upgraded to iOS 16.1. I have many duplicate contacts that I want to merge, and those contacts are associated with iCloud, Gmail and a local email account. When I went to All Contacts I got a list of 285 duplicates and I merged them all. However, I still had numerous duplicates. For example, Costco - Greenv SC appears as a contact under iCloud and my local account. However, even though they clearly are duplicates, they are not found and merged. Is there an explanation? And is there a way to find and merge all duplicates automatically?

iPhone 13

Posted on Nov 11, 2022 12:07 PM

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2 replies

Nov 13, 2022 02:31 PM in response to Mosscreek

Hi there Mosscreek,


We're happy to provide some guidance. If you're seeing duplicate contacts on your iPhone, you'll want to be sure you followed these steps to initially merge all the duplicates:


If you have more than one contact card with the same first and last name, you can merge the duplicate contacts.
1. Below My Card, tap Duplicates Found.
2. Tap individual contacts to review and merge them, or tap Merge All to merge all duplicate contacts.


If you're still seeing some duplicate contacts afterwards, you can follow the steps below to link them manually:


If two entries for the same person aren’t linked automatically, you can unify them manually.
1. Tap one of the contacts, tap Edit, then tap Link Contacts.
2. Choose the other contact entry to link to, then tap Link.

When you link contacts with different first or last names, the names on the individual cards don’t change, but only one name appears on the unified card. To choose which name appears on the unified card, tap one of the linked cards, tap the contact’s name on that card, then tap Use This Name For Unified Card.
Note: When you link contacts, those contacts aren’t merged. If you change or add information in a unified contact, the changes are copied to each source account where that information already exists.

You'll find these steps in this link: Get rid of duplicate contacts on iPhone - Apple Support


Take care.

Nov 16, 2022 08:11 AM in response to Sparks0829

Thanks for the reply. I was hoping that 16.1 would solve the problem by providing the new tool for finding duplicates. Obviously doing each duplicate manually is cumbersome but it appears to be the only way. What is curious to me is why obvious duplicates aren't identified; i.e., the first and last names are identical but are not called duplicates. I was hoping I had overlooked something!

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Merging Duplicate Contacts in iOS 16.1

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