Well, apparently that's too much too ask!

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m looking at two PDAs, a cell phone, Outlook Pro, Outlook Express and Blackberry Desktop.

Apparently, not one of those things can solve my problem. >$1k of address keeping technology and they have no way of automatically or manually combining two contacts into one without manually copying one into another field-by-field or using some third party software tool.

I have over a hundred contacts and they all have 2 to 6 entries each because I finally managed to combine my address books. I’ve normalized the names so that the names are consistent, but there’s no function to select two contacts and say “Bam, make them one and ask me to resolve any conflicts”, much less a function to do this automatically to all contacts with the same damn name.

I can send the contacts one by one or in bulk by e-mail, bluetooth, infrared and text message. I can auto-generate a mail merge, print envelopes in bulk, hell, even conference call some or all of these contacts. I can search, sort, and organize them into folders. I can cross-reference appointments and e-mails with contacts, and contacts with e-mails and appointments. I can store every single little piece of data on somebody. Why… can’t… I… combine…merge…resolve duplicates…or whatever you want to call it without buying some external tool!?

I think merging contacts should be a button that is added to contact software as soon as they decide you should be allowed to synchronize data or import data with other sources. How come none of them can do this?

Please, show me how I’m an idiot and I missed that golden button in Outlook. I’ll gladly withdraw my complaint, but googling around the general advice is “Copy paste the fields one by one into a single entry”. :mad: :mad: :mad: If it can be done, it’s at least not obvious!

How detached from reality does somebody have to be to not come up with a feature like this? ACT! can probably do it, but I don’t have it, and that’s overkill. I can convert to CSV and write a script, but I shouldn’t have to! I can shell out $50 for an address book enhancement plugin for Outlook, but I shouldn’t have to! This is probably the fourth time this has happened and this time there’s just too many contacts to do by hand.

To me this is the equivalent of making a word processor with the ability to copy and paste, but only paste to insert at the cursor, and never to replace a selection.
It’s so dum it doesn’t deserve a ‘b’.

2

Hey, look at that, I managed to do it by hand in 40 minutes! :mad:

3

What is this “by hand” of which you speak?

4

I feel your pain, but with iTunes and other music programs. If there is so much as an extra space they don’t merge the two songs even if all other details are identical. Technology is for the dogs.

5

Merging names and addresses is a much harder problem than you think it is. I’ve worked on software to do this at a couple different jobs, and it’s not at all easy to work out the logic. There’s software that does it, and does it well, but it’s expensive, and it’s difficult to make easy enough to use that the average Joe doesn’t hate it.

Is Mike Smith on First Ave. the same as Michael Smith on First St.? What about Mike Smith Jr.? M. Smith?

6

Don’t know if this would work but the import and export option under file in outlook might work. When you import contacts it asks you about importing duplicates. You could potentially export the contact list, and then try to import it back. Then sync with the various devices. When syncing they should ask you to resolve conflicts, assuming that option is checked. You may have to do something like create a new outlook profile though. Again, I have no idea if this will work, as I do not have that many email clients and have never tried it.

7

I’m not saying it’s trivial, but in my case all the names were identical, and all the rest of the information non-conflicting. I just had an e-mail list, a phone list, and an address list combined.

However, I think you’re overstating the complexity somewhat. Having a list of common alternate versions of names and a system for normalization it’s not that hard to combine Mike Smith Jr., M.Smith and Michael Smith into a set and prompt the user to decide if they are the same person or not. Basically for every field you generate a list of possible alternates that could still be considered matches. Having a database of names in the form of equivalence sets like { Michael, M., Mike } and { Michelle, M.} Given a contact you look for other contacts that have intersecting equivalence sets on defined fields, with blank being a member of each set.

8

<shrug> OK. All I’m saying is that I’ve gone through the exercise twice now with two different companies, and name/address matching, though not impossible, is a lot harder that you’d think it would be. In order to get any decent level of quality, you end up having to assign weights to each different part of the thing you want to match, and doing fuzzy matching and picking the ones that have the most highest percent match. Yes, it can be done, but it’s one of those things where for most applications, the cost factor is greater than the powers-that-be want to spend. Thus, you get the situation you describe in your OP.

9

Actually, it’s not. I work for a bulk mailer and part of my job is deduping, i.e. making sure the same piece of mail doesn’t get sent to the same person more than once. When I start deduping a mail list, we’ve already run it through address standardization software so both 1234 Main St and 1234 Main Street are the same. What gets interesting is when we’ve got Mike Smith at 1234 Main St, 1243 Main St, both of which are valid addresses, Mike Smith at 1234 Main St. Suite 456, and Mike Smith Jr. at 1234 Main St. It gets even more interesting when you allow for some of the popular names these days. How do I figure out the correct name when I’ve got Kaitlyn Jones and Katelynne Jones?

That’s not helping you, though. I’ve worked with some contact management software called Act! It will let you import address lists and compare incoming addresses to existing ones, find identical ones, and decide whether to merge them into one record or discard them. You can also do that to existing address lists. It costs a couple of hundred dollars (US), if memory serves, but it’s compatible with Outlook and it might be worth it.

I hope this does help.

10

Well I mentioned Act! in my OP,

but now I’m starting to really considering shelling out and buying it. Seems like a stress reduction investment, I wonder if I can write it off as a medical expense.