Editing Contact Information
| Cleaning Up Duplicate Contact Entries | Editing Contact Information | Adding Custom Notes |
Cleaning Up Duplicate Contact Entries
Address books are typically packed with many names and loads of contact information, and your Yahoo! Contacts is probably no exception. It’s easy to understand how you might have quite a few duplicate contact entries peppered throughout your book. In fact, because we give you a variety of ways to add information to your address book, (see the Adding Contacts tutorial), you’ve likely transferred information from one source that almost or exactly matches information from another source.
Yahoo! helps you clean up duplicate contact entries through a tool that lets you merge contact information. Of course, Yahoo! asks your permission before merging duplicates, and even gives you an opportunity to edit the information before saving it.
Here’s How
Open Yahoo! Contacts. (Remind me how.)
Click the Tool button, then select Clean up Duplicates.
Yahoo! Contacts takes a few seconds to find duplicates in your list of contacts and displays the results in the Clean Up Duplicates page.
The page shows how many duplicates Yahoo! found for each contact and whether the matches are EXACT or similar. An exact match means that each entry shares exactly the same information, though one of the entries may have additional information. Similar matches means each entry shares some subset of matching information. For example:
If you want Yahoo! to merge all of the exact matches without previewing the duplicates, click the Merge all EXACT button found near the bottom of the page.
In the window that displays, click the Yes, Merge Automatically button. Yahoo! merges the exact matches found throughout your address book and places a check next to the contact names in the Duplicates page.
To preview and possibly merge the findings of a contact, click anywhere in the row containing the name.
The preview page shows the duplicate information on the left side of the window, and on the right, shows how the merged entry will look should you choose to accept it.
You have a number of options in the preview window.
Completely agree—If the Merge Preview looks good to you, click the Save and Next button.
Yahoo! merges the entries into one and displays the next contact in the duplicates list.
No thanks—If you don’t want to merge the duplicates, click the Skip button.
Yahoo! keeps the original entries as they are and displays the next contact in the duplicates list.
Maybe a few—To keep a duplicate as it is and remove it from the merge, uncheck it on the left. When you do, notice that Merge Preview changes on the right showing only the checked duplicates. When you have what you want, click the Save and Next button.
Yahoo! merges only the checked duplicates and leaves the unchecked entry as is, and displays the next contact in the duplicates list.
Almost but not quite—You may not completely agree, but you do want to merge the checked contacts with a few changes. Edit the Merge Preview by clicking the Edit link.
The Merge Preview changes so that you can edit the contact information.
Make the changes you want, then click the Save and Next button.
Yahoo! incorporates your edits, merges the entries, and displays the next contact in the duplicates list.
You can return to the list at any time by clicking the Back to List button found at the bottom of the duplicates list window (or when you complete the merging process). When you do, you’ll see what contact entries you’ve merged, those you’ve skipped (they’re no longer shown in bold), and those you have left to work with.
When you’ve completed your merges, click the Close button at the bottom of the list.
What’s Next
Use the Clean Up Duplicates tool whenever you feel you may have introduced possible duplicates, such as after you’ve imported contact information from another application.
Words to Know
- Contact: a person with whom you interact; someone to whom you might want to send an email, instant message, or text message.