I have hundreds of contacts on my phone. Over the years I’ve added friends, family, colleagues, clients, recruiters, service providers and many, many other contacts to my phone.
The list has become so long it’s hard to manage. Finding a contact has become like going through the Yellow Pages.
If the number of people on the list wasn’t bad enough, it gets worse. Many of the contacts are duplicates.
Luckily, there are free tools that help you merge those duplicate contacts. They help you find outdated numbers and email addresses. They consolidate the different contact details of a single person in one entry.
On Android you have Cleaner – Merge Duplicate Contacts and quite a few others. Apple’s App Store hosts many such apps too. As always, read the reviews before installing or using these apps.
Google’s contacts app has a built-in tool for this (Menu -> Suggestions -> Clean up duplicates). You can do it via the website: visit Contacts, then open the menu via the icon on the top left, and click “Merge and fix”.
Once done, I’d suggest going over the list periodically. You probably won’t need the number of the plumber you last used 10 years ago. Ciao, Mario!
Optimising My Life 