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Gmail Adds The Ability To Merge Contacts

If you're like me, it is highly likely that you have multiple entries in your contacts database for the same person. This annoyance comes from syncing software that just doesn't get the job done correctly. Gmail now offers a way to boil multiple contact entries down into one.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves: PIM software that can't adequately merge multiple contact entries into one entry, leaving you with two, three, four, ten contact entries for the same person.

I've seen the same thing happen with Palm's PIM sync, Windows Mobile syncing, the iPhone, GMail ... pretty much every platform I've ever used. If you have contacts stored in multiple places -- i.e., PC, Web service, your phone(s) -- keeping them aligned can be tricky.

Sometimes, the only way to solve the problem of multiple contact entries is to edit each contact list by hand so they match. This is seriously time consuming and mind numbing.

In tandem with its new Sync service for the iPhone and Android, Google has added a tool that allows you to merge contacts within Gmail.

Marcus Foster, Product Manager, Google Mobile, explains, "To [merge duplicates], select both contacts, and click 'Merge these 2 contacts.' When you merge contacts, your address auto-complete won't work as well as before. We're working on a fix for this, but until that's out you might notice addresses showing up in a suboptimal order in auto-complete, e.g. your friend's work address coming up first when you're used to emailing their Gmail address."

I spent some time editing my Gmail contacts database last night. Even with this tool, the process is still time consuming. But, it is easier than doing everything on your own.

The tool lets you marge all the data you have stored for any given contact into one master contact file. When you first merge them, you can edit the contact to add the appropriate labels to their email addresses, street addresses and phone numbers so you know if you're reaching someone at work, home or on their mobile.

It's not perfect, but it is better than nothing.

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