Most of us are terrible at managing our address books and contact lists. If you're anything like me, you've been amassing contacts for years but you've rarely spent the time to go through and organize them.

The result? Lots of out-of-date contact details and, even more annoying, lots of duplicates.

While we can't help you establish which contact details are still current, we can show you how to quickly identify and merge duplicate contacts. Keep reading to learn how to combine duplicate macOS contacts into a single entry. (We've previously covered the process for Google contacts.)

How to Find and Merge Duplicate Contacts on macOS

To find and merge duplicate contacts on macOS:

  1. Launch the Contacts application.
  2. Select All Contacts in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
  3. In the menu bar, go to Card > Look for Duplicates.
  4. The app will notify you about how many duplicates it found.
  5. Click on Merge to complete the process.

The app takes care of the entire merging process. If two contacts are identical, it will delete one. If two cards share the same name but have different contact information, they will be merged.

Remember, if you're away from your Mac, you can also use iCloud as a last resort. The downside is iCloud only lets you delete contacts, not merge them.

To access your contacts on iCloud, visit www.icloud.com and enter your credentials. Once you've logged in, click on Contacts. To delete a contact, highlight the contact(s) name and press Delete.

Do you stay abreast of duplicate entries in your address book, or is this process going to help you get your contact list under control? Let us know your stories in the comments section below.

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