Duplicate Contacts

Duplicate Contacts

How Did We Get a Duplicate Contact Record?

When a user logs in, if there is a contact record in your database that has the same email address associated with it, the user will be connected to that contact record. (This does not work if you turn off email verification.)

Duplicate contact records are created when:
  1. a user logs in and uses a different email address
  2. there is more than one contact record that lists their email address - since the system does not know which contact record is correct, it will create a 3rd record.

Scenarios/Examples


#1 - Mom creates a contact record and add's her husband's work email as his contact email address.  Dad logs in later and uses his personal email address.  Since that email address is not in the system, a new contact record is created.  To clean up - move Dad's preferred email address to contact record #1 for the parent 2 email address and then cancel the second contact record.

#2 - You uploaded or transferred a list of contacts in to your database. When users log in they choose to use a different email address.  There is no value in keeping the first contact record.  Cancel that record.

#3 - It is not safe to assume that all duplicate contact records need to be cancelled. In some cases, users might prefer to keep their records separate. See our FAQ - If parents are divorced, can they each have their own account login?

What Do I Do About Duplicate Contact Records?

Cancelling the Contact Record that is the Duplicate

  • Choose which record should be their active contact record.
  • Update the second contact record to "Cancelled."
  • Select "No, do NOT add emails to Do Not Contact List."
  • Do you need to move their new email address to the contact record that you are keeping? 
Cancelled Contacts will:
  • not show up on any reports.
  • have pending orders removed.
  • be removed from all volunteer opportunities.
  • not show up in your "search" results on the dashboard.
  • previous orders remain on the record and they remain attached to the form report and ordered items report.

If you have duplicate contacts and emails on your auto-populating newsletter subscription lists, there is no need to delete and re-create the list. Instead, we recommend Updating Your Auto-Populating Newsletter Lists.

How To Choose Which Contact Record Should Be Active

  1. If one contact record has associated orders with it - you should choose that as the one that will remain active.
  2. If there are no orders on either contact record, keep the one that the parent most recently logged in with and has their user account associated with it.

How To Cancel a Contact Record

  1. Open the user's contact record.
  2. On the Contact Information tab, find the Contact Status section in the lower right hand corner.
  3. Use the "edit" button to change the Status field to Cancelled.

Reports

We have a new report that will allow administrators to find duplicate contact records.
  1. Go to People / Reports / Contact Reports / Duplicate Contacts.
  2. This report searches the database for users who appear to be duplicates based on their name, address, or email.
  3. It shows you a comparison of the duplicate records side by side.

The contact record that has the “user” account associated with it should be the one that you keep. This is the contact record that is connected to the user login information.





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