David: Hey folks today, I'm going to teach you the best way to remove duplicate
contacts from your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
That's coming up next on tech talk America.
Hey folks, and welcome to the class.
One of the common issues that can affect both Mac and iOS
users is duplicate contacts.
And this can happen for several different reasons.
If you own a Mac, just keep watching.
But if the only device that you own is an iPhone or an iPad, then just
go ahead and skip to that time code.
All right.
Mac users, before we begin, the first thing that I want you to
do is to back up your contacts.
Now, there are two different ways that you can accomplish this one
method involves selecting all of your contacts and exporting them as
a type of file known as a V card.
The other option is to create an archive.
That will result in an .ABB file.
Now, there is a critical difference between these two types of files.
So please, whatever you do pay attention to this next part, a V card can contain
contact information for one person, but it can also contain multiple contacts.
An abbu file is a complete archive of all of your contacts.
Here is the key reason why I think it's a bad idea to create an archive.
Let's say a year from now, you're cleaning up files on your Mac and
you come across that abbu file.
You can't quite remember why you created it.
So you double click on it and open it.
And just like that, you have just deleted all of the contacts that
you have added in the last year and abbu file replaces your data.
Whereas a V card will simply add that contact or contacts back into the list.
So please do not go with archive.
Okay.
Now that I've sufficiently scared the crap out of all of you, let's go
through that process together first.
Let's make sure we're here under all contacts at the top left.
Now I need to specify that I want to export all of my contacts and
not just the one that's selected.
So at this point, I'm going to press command and the letter
a on my keyboard to select.
Then I'm going to go over to the file menu, hover over
export and select export V card.
I'll give my V card a name and for now I'll just save it to the desktop.
Before we clean up the duplicates.
There is one more thing that I want you to do.
One of the problems that can occur when merging duplicate contacts is when you
have two contacts that have the same first name and there is no last name saved.
So at this point, I would like to teach you a little trick that will help
prevent you from having to go through all of your contacts, looking for
anyone who doesn't have a last name.
I want you to go into the file menu and click on where it says new smart group.
Now let's call this group no last name in this first category.
I want you to place your cursor over where it says other, and then select
last name in the second category.
Let's change it to is not set and now click.
Okay.
And just like that we have isolated all of the contacts that only have one name.
If any of these names that you see in your list are the same.
All you need to do is add a last name to one of them to prevent
the computer from accidentally merging those contacts together.
Okay.
Ready to see how easy it is to remove duplicate contacts.
Just click into the card menu at the top, then select look
for duplicates and then click.
See, I told you that was easy.
Now at this point, let me get back to those folks who don't own a Mac, unless
you're curious to find out the answer because it is kind of interesting.
All right.
If you own an iPhone or an iPad, but not a Mac, let me start by
saying, look, folks, I get it.
You want me to recommend you an app that you can probably download for free?
That magically removes all of those duplicate contacts and don't get me wrong.
There are apps out there that do that, but here's the thing.
Before you go down that road, think about this.
Let's pretend that you and I are at a party we've never met.
And I come up to you out of nowhere and say, Hey buddy, give me your phone.
I'll remove all of your duplicate contacts and Hey, guess what?
I'll even do it for free, but one little.
When I'm done doing that, I'm going to export a copy of all of your contacts
and then sell that information to anyone out there who wants to buy it.
Oh my God.
Ew, David!
Creeped out?
Yeah, you should be.
I have to tell you when I decided to make this video, I thought for sure
that I would be able to find a solution for non Mac owners that doesn't involve
putting all of your contacts at risk.
I even spoke with apple and spoke with a senior advisor and by my own admission,
this is far from a perfect solution.
What you really need is a friend with a Mac who will let you set up a temporary,
additional user on their computer.
Now, please note, I said additional user, not guest user that's because I
tried doing this with a guest account.
And apparently you can not sign into iCloud from a guest account.
I didn't even know that one.
So yes, it does actually need to be a real account that you then
really need to delete afterwards.
That way you can just allow the contacts to download to the computer,
run the duplicate removal tool, let it sync those changes back to the cloud
and then delete the user account.
Now, does that qualify as a solution?
Personally, no, not by my own standards.
And if you agree that there should be a better way to do this, that doesn't
involve a Mac or needing to give all your contacts to a marketing company,
then please let me know about it down below in the comment section and do
me a favor and tag apple as well.
Keep in mind if you ever need help with your Mac, everyone needs a little
one-on-one assistance every day.
You can sign up for a little tech therapy session with me by visiting my website
techtalkamerica.com/privatelessons.
And now that everything's going back into lock down it looks like there's a
pretty good chance that I'm going to be doing a lot more of those private lessons.
Oh joy.
Thank you so much for watching everyone.
This is David A Cox with tech talk America class dismissed.