Merging Duplicate Contacts

This article was developed to describe the steps involved in merging duplicate contacts within the Forth CRM system.

The De-Dupe tool allows you to search for contacts with a single data point in common. This means you can locate all contacts with the same Email, Last Name, Business Name, Home Phone, Work Phone, Cell Phone, Social Security Number (SSN), or Address, then compare and merge them, removing duplicates without losing any information saved to the files.

NOTE: We do not allow merging enrolled, dropped, or graduated contacts.

1. Go to the Contacts tab.
   

   NOTE
   You will need to edit the URL in your web browser to access the page required to perform this action.

2. Click at the end of the web address URL in the page header and change the word "index" to "dedup".
   
   
   
3. Hit ENTER. The Merge Contacts page opens.
   

   IMPORTANT
   We suggest saving this page as a favorite by clicking the green icon with a white “+” in the center, located all the way to the right of the CRM window, above the navigation bar. This will make it easy to return to the de-dupe screen in the future.

4. Select the field you wish to check for duplicates by typing a word or number into the Filter field, and then click the small white arrow in a green circle .
   
5. Duplicates will now appear, grouped for comparison, along with the number of possible duplicate contacts at the top of the page. You will want to determine if the grouped records are actual duplicates or if they should be left separate. Click to enlarge the example below.
   
6. Do the following:
   • Select the Master Record. This is the record the duplicate(s) will be merged into; it is the record you keep. You want to mark the record with the most existing data saved as Master, and then...
     
   • Select the Merge record. You will remove it from your account and transfer any data that doesn't exist on the Master. 
     
7. When finished, click the Merge / Dedup button. This will transfer any missing data saved on the merge file(s) to the Master.
   
   The page reloads, and the table of merge groups will refresh, removing the now-merged duplicates.

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