Even if smartphones are equipped with powerful operating systems and wonderful applications, address book management remains a real chaos. At the time when the contacts were saved on the SIM memory it was certainly easier than today where there are no limits to the number of contacts that can be saved and where the address book is capable of holding a lot of more information, including the photo of the individual contacts.
In fact, a common problem is that of double or even triple contacts that answer the same name or the same contact, but perhaps with different accounts with some applications such as Google+, Twitter, Facebook and various email services.
It is very likely that there are two or more different contact records of a person on the address book, one containing the email address, the other the main number and maybe another with the photo.
Fortunately, the contacts in the Android address book can be merged in several ways, automatically or manually.
READ ALSO: Contact management on Google address book
1) Merge contacts from Google Contacts
If we use an Android smartphone, we will surely be logged in with a Google account, thus activating the backup of the address book in the Google account; this system allows you to save all your contacts on a Web page accessible only to us. This backup can be configured in the settings in the backup and restore menu or in the Account menu (Google) .
To view all the saved contacts, including duplicates and duplicates, we can open the web page on the PC Google Contacts, reachable from here -> Google Contacts .
We log in with the same account used on the smartphone and the service will periodically check for duplicate contacts, showing them in the Duplicates window accessible from the left sidebar.
We open this section of the site to see duplicate contacts and merge them together, so as to finally avoid duplication in the address book
The phone book is synchronized with that of the mobile phone and all changes will be reflected on the device.
Obviously, the system works only if the contacts are synchronized as duplicates also on the Google account: if duplicates appear on the smartphone, perhaps the problem concerns another account configured to show a different address book.
2) Merge contacts directly from the address book
The address book in Android is located in the People or Contacts application to be found in the list of apps.
Touch the contact face to be merged with a duplicate and then the pencil icon, so as to enable the changes.
From the contact card, we touch the options button (three dots at the top right) is then we touch the Merge or Merge contacts button (it depends on the manufacturer) to merge the contact in question with the one most similar by name; the system will find any duplicates that can be joined to the main board.
The operation, in this case, is manual and must be done for each contact that we find as a duplicate on our phone, so that we can finally put order and join the contacts.
This is obviously the most annoying procedure and, given that the manufacturers are different and the Android customizations are different, it is not always found in the Merge at first time item, we will have to search through the contact options until we find the right option that allows you to merge contacts correctly.
Fortunately, on some smartphones a menu item is also integrated to quickly merge all the contacts with very few taps on the screen: this is the case of Xiaomi, where you can also find Merge double contacts among the items in the options.
Using this feature, all duplicates will be searched and solutions will be offered to merge similar contacts, so that we can solve the problem of duplicate contacts once and for all.
3) Merge contacts via app
Contacts + is one of the best applications to manage the address book and contacts on Android which has, among its functions, that of joining duplicate contacts; we can download it for free from here -> Contacts + .
The app automatically searches and fixes all duplicates, so that the address book is free from any type of duplication.
Alternatively you can use a specific app like Contacts Optimizer, downloadable from here -> Contacts Optimizer .
With this application you can scan all your contacts to look for duplicates and merge them if possible.
Another excellent application for unifying double contacts that also allows you to backup the address book is Simpler Contacts, very easy to use and fully automatic.
All we have to do is start the app and check if there are duplicates in our address book, so that we can merge or even delete them, thus keeping the order between the contacts.
4) Display multiple contacts
Another method to quickly free the address book from all duplicates and duplicate contacts is to reduce the display of contacts only to the account of our interest, where we have all the contacts saved (basically the Google account).
On many smartphones, in fact, the contacts saved in the Google account, in the local account, in the smartphone manufacturer's account, the contacts saved on the SIM and the contacts from the various chat services installed (Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger etc.) are shown .
In order to restore order and view only the Google contacts (which are those synchronized online and therefore safe in case of theft or damage to the phone) we will have to open the Contacts app on our smartphone, open the options and look for the Contacts menu to view, Contact lists or View (obviously the items change according to the smartphone model you have).
Once you open this item we will have the opportunity to choose which contacts to show in the address book: Usually Everyone is selected, generating the chaos you see among the contacts!
Select the Google account or another account on which you have saved all the contacts to display a single list, so as to significantly reduce the clutter and show only the really duplicated contacts in the phone book.
We leave the tick or the selection on the desired account and immediately check the address book to see if there are still duplicate contacts: most of them should have disappeared.
READ ALSO: Synchronize your mobile address book with Facebook profile photos and info
