There are situations that you encounter when you use Android, and they cannot be called very unpleasant, but still some residue remains. Well, just think, there will be three “Dima”, two “Vasya” and four “Ekaterina Andreyevna from the analytics department” in the phone book. Someone calls them duplicate, and someone calls them duplicate contacts, but the essence of this does not change. All these are trifles, but you can and should get rid of them too. There are several ways to do this, including the simplest one – the built-in capabilities of the phone. But there are more advanced methods that are designed for those who want to keep everything under control. Let's see how this can be done easily and painlessly.
Contacts should also be in order, as in the entire phone.
The reason for the appearance of repeated contacts is not so important to us now, since they already exist anyway. Therefore, we will talk about it below. For now, let's discuss how to deal with doubts quickly and painlessly.
How to remove duplicate contacts on Android
To delete contacts from the smartphone's memory, we will consider several methods, in particular: deleting by means Android, deleting using cloud storage, manual deletion and program deletion.
You shouldn't be intimidated by the word “deletion”, which I often use – it's not so scary. In fact, it is more of a “union”, but the superfluous disappears – it means removal.
Manual removal of duplicate contacts
No matter how obvious this advice may seem, it will be the most effective, since often duplication of contacts is an exception and there is no such thing that the entire address book goes into a copy at once.
When your phone's electronic address book grows, you start to miss those books.
In order to manually remove duplicates, you need to open the “Contacts” application, select the one that you do not need, check whether it really doubled up, and not just you specially created the second one, and delete it. To delete, you need to open the contact, then press the softkey with the image of three dots and then select “delete”.
The method is the most convenient, but suitable only for those who have such contacts only. If there are a lot of duplications, then read on.
Automatic deletion of duplicate contacts
There are times when you may forget that the person's number is already in your contacts and want to record his email. Therefore, it is worth checking whether the records have doubled.
Every modern smartphone has almost hundreds of different contacts.
For this case, Android also has an automatic duplicate removal tool. Using it is as simple as possible. You just need to open the “Contacts” application, start the menu (usually by clicking on the “three dots”), then select “Offers” and then “Optimization”.
The smartphone will automatically scan your contact list and suggest those that can be merged. You just have to choose all or those that you think are necessary. Then the system will do everything itself and you will receive the address book in the form in which it should be.
Deleting Contacts via Gmail
Automatic merging of duplicates is also possible on the Google website in the services section. Your account implies storing information in a backup copy and simply within the Google mail service.
In order to get into it, open the Google website on a computer or other device, log in to it and select the section with services, which is located next to your account avatar.
In the window that opens, scroll to the “contacts” item and open them. Next, in the main menu on the left side, select “Merge and Fix”. Again, you will be offered contacts for unification, but on the site it is even more convenient than in the application.
It's still convenient when all contacts are in one place.
When you open the page, you will already be offered a list of fixes, since the scan is performed without you and the system constantly monitors your address book.
It is only important to remember that this method is good in cases where you have enabled synchronization with your phone and all data is the same as possible on the server and in the device's memory. In this case, after optimization, all contacts will be automatically updated in the smartphone.
Apps to remove duplicate contacts on Android
I would not recommend using third-party applications to tidy up your address book. Not only do I not really trust them in principle, and on a subconscious level I am afraid that they will delete unnecessary things, they also require a lot of permissions.
Often they even ask for access to your Google data. Doubtful prospect that someone could collect contacts on their servers. For example, this can be done to draw up a plan for advertising calls.
If you nevertheless decided to use a third-party application, and not the built-in Google tools, which already has access to everything, then the simpler option would be Simpler Merge Duplicates. It is not worth describing it in detail, since the application works very intuitively and is similar to what Google does.
This application can be used, but it is better to use regular methods.
Why are contacts duplicated on Android
The simplest case of duplication is when you simply forgot that you have a contact and recreated it. There are times when you quickly write down an email and create a separate contact for it, although the main one already exists.
There are also cases when messengers “help” create new contacts. They sometimes save numbers without thinking that they already exist.
However, the most common problem is the inconsistency of the formats of numbers “8” and “+7”. Many phones still do not understand that they are the same thing. For example, I had five such doubles, but these are all numbers that I saved many years ago.
Check your address book. Perhaps remove a lot of unnecessary things and put things in order, because it's so easy.