Manage Duplicates

[lucyd77]

can we have the avalibility to remove duplicates periodically would avoid numerious emails on our list and possiblity higer fees. Please advice when the option is here to remove duplicates occassionally. ty Lucy

[HarryS445]

The overall user interface of Constant Contact is old and needs to be improved for ease of use and intuitive navigation. There are too many issues to list here, but I would be happy to discuss them, or even visit Constant Contact. If anyone is interested, you can reach me at **Removed By Moderator**

[Jeff_G]

Thank you for your feedback on the duplicate contact management. If you would like to see changes in this area, please let us know by voting for this idea.

[SAScc]

We regularly send emails to different sub-sets within the same larger body of people. Sometimes they overlap, sometimes not (most times they DO). Heretofore, we had all of our groups arranged in nice, neat contact lists.

Now, with the new "improvements," all of our specific contact group lists have been decimated. What's worse, when we try to re-upload the list, it ignores what it sees as duplicates. Are we doing something wrong?

Why was all of this changed? Have you not heard the old axiom, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" As usual, you should give customers a CHOICE of how WE want to manage our accounts, instead of foisting new things upon us after years of operating a certain way.

We appreciate that you take the time to implement improvements, but change for change's sake is unnecessary and frustrating. Sorry, this time the changes didn't work out well.

[Atl_Apt_Assn]

Not all of my contacts are loading into the lists I downloaded them to. I've called the help desk twice and was told two different things for loading my lists and dealing with duplicates! I'm so irritated and unhappy with Constant Contact when my contract is up I plan on going somewhere else. I understand those that unsubscribe will not be added, but when I account for them it still doesn't add up!

[Hannah_M]

Hi Russ, I am sorry to hear of this frustration. Can you clarify--are you seeing MORE contacts added? Is this before or after managing the duplicates?

[Jeff_G]

It sounds like the main issue you're having is with how the system handles duplicates. Where before, a duplicate contact would just be added to a list without any other information changing, it now sees the duplicate and wants to know if the old and new contact are the same or are different. It was done this way in part because we had a number of users asking to be able to have separate contacts using the same email address. If you upload a group that it sees has duplicates, it will ask you if you want to keep them separate or merge them. You can do this individually or as a whole by clicking on the Duplicates category on the left. Once the duplicates are managed, they are added to the email list or lists.

[TimothyR4]

I love that it detects you are entering an email address you already have in your lists and asks if you want to edit that record instead of adding a new one. However, if you say 'yes' and edit it, then click 'save,' it leaves you inside that record and does not provide a button to go back and add another new record.

[katherineS53697]

1. difficult to see bounces and remove, too many categories -- MUCH simpler to use before!!! and now it removed the whole list when I checked next to name box, I thought it would remove only the page I was on-- this is NOT better. 2. when I upload a excel list it duplicates the name so now it shows twice 3. the only thing I like on CONTACTS is the search function.

[MichelleW9]

Many of my contacts have several email addresses in their account, including email addresses of their teachers. The system should be able to weed out those duplicates when sending an email, no matter which contact or field that email addresses exists under. Some teachers are receiving about 10 of the same email because of that problem so I'm manually removing their address from each student contact. I tried chatting with the help line about this problem but they maintained that it was a problem with the domain receiving the emails.

[SAScc]

I'm sorry, but there is no such category. Where is "on the left" referring to? At what stage of the process? Which screen?

Why can't people be a part of more than one list? It just doesn't make any sense.

[Jeff_G]

Since I wrote that reply, there has been another change in how duplicate contacts are handled, in order to make the process clearer and easier.

If a contact is uploaded with an email address that's already in the system, the new process will update contact information (ie. name, company, etc.), and add the contact to the new list. It will no longer wait in a "Duplicates" category to be manually taken care of.

Contacts can definitely be added to more than one list. 

[Jeff_G]

Thank you for your feedback, Timothy.

[GreaterPortlandL]

It would be really helpful to be able to view contacts that are in active (with no emails) and contacts that are not assigned to specific lists.

[AllenF2]

I find it difficult to manage our Unsubscribes now. The Unsubscribed list does not show a column for "Date Unsubscribed" which is way more important than "Date Added" for me. I have to go into the Email Reports section and click on each email sent recently with Unsubscribes, then export that file for each email. I know that I'm missing at least 13 who have recently Unsubscribed, but I can't find which email it was!

[lucyd77]

A little concerned w/ timing imports which creats duplicate emails. In order to remove duplicates it must be done manuel or else we are stuck w/ numerious emails contact on our list which may create high fees for us. ty Lucy

[Hannah_M]

Thanks for your feedback on duplicates. You can have the same contact in more than one list without paying for it twice but if you have the same email address with different name information it will count as two contacts toward your billing. 

[ConnieS32]

Dialog box that comes up is confusing. It says edit or no, than I click edit and it says merged. Box needs to say: Edit and Merge OR Don't Edit.

[JuanitaA6]

You need to make merging duplicate contacts easier. You should be able to click on the records that are duplicate and select and "Merge" button.

[HilaryK18]

there must be a better way to avoid duplications and multiple names across email lists. do not want to send similar emails to same person.

[Samantha_O]

Hello,

Currently like you have pointed out the only way that we can handle duplicate email address as separate contacts within your list is manually.  What you can do is Export the list to Excel and use Excel to show you the duplicates. You can then take the duplicates and either add them to a list or tag them to manage them all at once or search for them in the account to manage one by one.

Not familiar with how to show duplicates in Excel?  One easy way is to highlight the column(s) of email addresses, from the Home tab in Excel you can choose Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values, then hit ok for the color scheme that you would want.  This will highlight any cells (with your chosen color scheme) that are duplicated in the column(s) that you have chosen.  This makes it easier when scrolling through your list to see which email addresses are duplicated. 

[SaltSpaDenver]

I'm getting duplicate names/email addresses - correcting errors on one list seems to create duplicate email addresses

[Lory_H]

I am sorry that you're seeing duplicate contacts in your account. We can look into this with you, but we need a little more information about what is happening. When you're ready, can you call the support team at 855-229-5506 so we can get this resolved for you? Duplications shouldn't be happening and we want to make sure that you're able to use the contact management tools with ease. Please let us know how we can help!

[KarenR61]

I just downloaded my entire database, removed people who RSVPed for an event, and reuploaded the remaining emails as a new list. The activity report says I uploaded 8 new contacts. How is that possible when every single one of those email addresses came from my contact list? Not a single email address was new.

[Lory_H]

Karen, I am sorry about the confusion on that. In order to provide you with more information, we would like to get a few more details from you about what happened. Can you call the support team at your earliest convenience? We can be reached at (866) 289-2101 when you have a moment. Please keep the list you used for upload handy, we may want to look at the original document when we speak. Thanks so much!

[STEMIsystem]

It would make sense to have indicator/flag when an duplicate email is uploaded allowing to overwrite existing or ignore - thank you

[Stephanie_C]

Hi,

Is this a setting you would like to turn on in your account and remain constant? Or would this be better served on a case by case basis? For instance on your uploads, you can automatically tell it to merge duplicates or say that you want to review each duplicate and make changes that way?

[ColeH24]

I have two contact lists - one with all our VP's contacts and one with all our President's contacts. I want to send the same email to both lists but I need to change the sender name based on whose contacts they are. In order to do that, I make a copy of the original email and change the sender name. This results in two separate emails going out (even though it's the same email). As a result, if one contact is on both lists, they get the email twice. Can CC develop a feature to search for duplicates or crosscheck two lists and then eliminate duplicates from one? I would think other folks might find a feature like that useful.

[NitzaG]

It would be great if you could scan for duplicates.

[Constance_F]

Thank you for taking the time to give us some feedback.  Constant Contact does check for duplicates in lists when sending, but this feature does not transfer when sending a new email.  We are collecting feedback on adding the ability to exclude a tag when sending.  At this time the only way to do that would be to send those unique emails to unique lists.

Our support team is available at 866-289-2101. Constant Contact’s Phone Support is available Monday – Thursday: 7a.m. – 11p.m. ET, Friday: 7a.m. – 9p.m. ET and Saturday – Sunday: 10a.m. – 8p.m. ET.

Use Live Chat or other Support options by visiting: https://ui.constantcontact.com/support/index.jsp

[ReneeG18]

Is it possible to add a feature that would help me search for duplicate clients, by name, even if they have different email addresses

[Constance_F]

Thank you for taking the time to give us feedback on the new tools!  Please continue to share you valuable ideas and vote for other ideas you would like to see in product.

Our support team is available at 866-289-2101. Constant Contact’s Phone Support is available Monday – Thursday: 7a.m. – 11p.m. ET, Friday: 7a.m. – 9p.m. ET and Saturday – Sunday: 10a.m. – 8p.m. ET.

Use Live Chat or other Support options by visiting: https://ui.constantcontact.com/support/index.jsp

[BryanF88807]

Hi there. There really needs to be a way to see duplicate email accounts. It's essential, actually. If you aren't working on that ability now, please submit it to your development team. A quick search will show that many other people are needing this functionality as well. Thanks for your consideration. Adam

[SusanV432]

Has the feature been added to be able to merge duplicate contacts? If not, it would really be helpful.

[DebbieA35]

Need to have a more reasonable way of accessing and changing duplicates. Get on it, Constant Contact. Your lack of sophistication is mind-boggeling and cruel.

[PegH9]

I'm wondering if there could be a pop up when adding contacts that let's me know if it's a duplicate?

[ROGERT18]

I need a 1 button duplicate email delete function. If the email list continues to build with duplicate emails I could get bumped into a higher price category. The duplicate email addresses make the list "messy" to review and maintain. I think CC would have this minimal function available. As my contact list gets bigger I will be looking for a vendor that has this function.

[cfsv.president]

It would be nice if you could easily duplicate a New Contact you just added, esp. if you only want to change a couple fields.

[ChristyS146]

I have MANY customers who are duplicated in the system (3 contacts for each one) I am being charged for such- very disappointed, I thought CC was supposed to merge contacts with the same info. I have to manually go through 3700 emails manually!!

[GintyB3]

Constant Contact sometimes creates duplicate clients when it syncs with MindBody and right now I have to do a lot of work to find and remove those contacts. Assuming that this can't be fixed so it doesn't happen at all (which actually would be my preferred resolution), I would like Constant Contact to be able to show me a filtered list with just duplicates so I can quickly select and delete them. The whole "export to Excel, find the duplicates, go back into Constant Contact, find the duplicates again, and then delete them" is not working for me with a list bigger than 500 people. It's time consuming and unwieldy.

[bikeHUB]

Come. On.

[EvelynM90]

Is there a way to overwrite the name field when I upload a new contact list? The email, city and state only allow one entry but the name field will attach multiple names to one email address then when I select that field to be inserted in my email body it includes all the names in that field instead of just one.

[CFC-News]

I agree this is ridiculouos. When managing a large list which includes multiple family members that all use the same email address, constant contact sends out one email for each person even though the emails are exactly the same - this is dumb. 

There should be an option to only send one email per email address regardless of whether there are different names attached to that email. 

[DaveR7]

It is important for my company to have multiple names sharing one email. These contacts are most often on different lists and receive emails specific to that list. It is a problem however when we send a general email to all lists. Then the one email address receives multiple emails addressed to each individual at that shared address.

The simple solution is to have a switch that allows the sending of multiple email to the same address or to only send one email to multiple contacts sharing an email address.

This has become a huge issue for my company and the many elementary schools that use CC. The current process is unworkable and seriously needs to be addressed in an open forum of CC users.