Microsoft Outlook Contacts Duplicating

Malcolm, your description of the issue and the description by all others before you match precisely the experience which I have been having for several weeks.  Having burned so much time on this issue, I was so relieved to see people that were having identical problems.

I use a Surface Pro 3 running Windows 10 and a Nokia (Microsoft) Lumia 930 mobile phone also running Windows 10.

It is driving me around the bend having wasted countless hours trying to get this resolved through web-based research, my corporate IT people and Telstra Platinum.  Today I had another go a resolving it through Microsoft.  I spent virtually 6 hours moving from MS phone support to Tier 1 tech to Tier 2 tech.  I am advised I will be getting a call from a tier 3 tech, and hopefully chatting by phone rather than by written text (which is very hard work when trying to articulate technical problems with both obvious and subtle aspects to them).  Apparently I will be getting a call within 3-5 business days, so I hope this leads to a successful outcome.

I have been able to rule out my mobile phone and my Outlook 2016 client as the source of the problem.  The replications are definitely coming from Outlook.live (or Outlook.com as referred to by the MS techs).

Similarities to the symptoms reported by others:-

1. multiplication of contact records are usually represented by earlier versions of the contact record (i.e. records which have been previously changed or added to in some way)
2. the number of replications seems to increase by one each time you retry copying the correct data into the contacts folder and re-syncing
3. The same replication does not necessarily reappear each time

4.  Not all contact records are replicated

Checking the accuracy of the synchronisation has been made more difficult because Outlook may choose to automatically link records that have similarities, some association or no obvious association at all.  So I have to go through each one to find the "hidden" records that are causing difference in numbers of records between Outlook.live and Outlook 2016 client.

Like you Malcolm, I have said all along that it appears that deleted entries are sitting somewhere on a Microsoft server and being dragged back to the live system during the sync process.

To date, it appears that responses by MS to this issue (as evidenced by this forum) have been very poor and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the issue.  At best, the responses demonstrate a level of arrogance rather than a genuine desire to understand.  We are not talking about duplicates.  If we were, it would ordinarily be easy to fix - just delete them.  But those of us experiencing the problem know that records that are deleted (regardless of where they are deleted from) somehow recreate themselves.  Linkages that are broken, also like to eventually re-establish themselves.

I have never experienced anything as bad as this with any piece of software.  I am currently not using Contacts currently because I fear my additions, changes and deletions will be clobbered by this bug, whatever it is.

One interesting observation is that if you create a new Microsoft account, and copy/paste the contact records into the contact folder of the new account, the replication/duplication process does not occur.  So the cause is obviously something that is linked to the user's account.  Having said that, I hope that no one is going to ask me to change my email address.  I did that a few months ago, having left my employer, and it is not a fun exercise to feed that through to all parties for which an email address is required.

Please Microsoft - try to show this issue some serious attention.  I think that we as users have demonstrated amazing loyalty by trying to resolve rather than shopping elsewhere.

If I fail with the Tier 3 tech, then I am going to buy a Teledex.

The suggestion to delete duplicates manually demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the problem.

The "duplicates" appear to be copies of previously deleted versions of Contacts.  So anyone who has deleted everything and started again by importing a "clean" csv file is likely, a short time later, to see the superseded versions returning.  If you have done this a number of times, the number of "duplicates" will merely increase.  It is apparent that the deleted entries are sitting somewhere on a Microsoft server (possibly in breach of data protection legislation) and that somehow the process involved in synchronisation is dragging these back into the "live" system.  I have seen the reappearance of entries that were deleted a  few months ago.

If you do delete the "duplicates", extreme care must be taken.  There is a danger that you will delete the latest entries, leaving you with outdated details and failed communications.

Just to emphasise the extent of this major software error that needs urgent attention by Microsoft, most, if not all of the contacts will be stripped of their entries in the "Company" field when the "duplicates" arrive. If you are really lucky you can watch this happening on Outlook 2016.

Thank you for the support links. I get how to delete duplicate contact so that's not an issue. I also get how to export and import contacts so that's not an issue. What is an issue is the duplications occur while all my ActiveSync devices are turned off so it would appear that this is a back-end Microsoft issue.

Thank you.

Hi,

To address your concern, kindly refer to the support links below:

• Duplicate contacts are created when you synchronize a mobile device by using Exchange ActiveSync.
• Delete duplicate contacts.

Let us know if you need further help.

Regards.

Hi Jeraldine,

There has been an additional response to this thread that is outside of your recommendations as a solution.

This is really becoming annoying; Microsoft people jump on these threads to TELL us to use other links and then get back to them if we need further help and then go silent when we ask for that help.

Do you have anything further to add?

Cheers!

I had a similar problem in June - July last year (2016) which was related to syncing with LinkedIn contacts. Again, Microsoft acknowledged that it was a problem at their end, but it took more than a month to fix. I am experiencing the same / similar issue again, however it also appears that I have lost more than 40 contacts in addition to the duplication's. Although MS online help try and provide support, I am sick of having to re-explain myself everytime and then get no real answers or a solution. Extremely frustrating.

Regards,

Mike