Salesforce Merge Contacts | Merge Duplicate Contacts

Dealing with huge amounts of data is a big problem, and this problem gets more serious when the same data is repeated multiple times, and we get clueless now with which data we work.

This similar problem we commly face in Salesforce for the contact data. As a Salesforce consultant, I mostly get questions regarding Salesforce merging duplicate contacts, so I decided to write article on that.

In this Salesforce tutorial, I will explain about Salesforce Merge Contacts with a step-by-step explanation of how to merge contacts in Salesforce.

Table of Contents

Merge Contacts in Salesforce

Contacts in Salesforce hold the information of people associated with the business. These people could be customers, dealers, individuals, etc.

Contact merge in Salesforce means combining duplicate contact records into a single record. It helps in the cleanness of data to ensure the data within the Salesforce database by removing the redudant contact data.

The major reasons for merging contacts in Salesforce are: –

Duplicacy – Duplicate records are saved in Salesforce
Contact joining request raised by customer

Mass Merge Contacts in Salesforce

Now, the question arises: can we mass merge contacts in Salesforce?

Yes, we can mass merge contacts in Salesforce, but it has a limit of a maximum of three contacts merged at a time.

Still, if you want to mass merge contact, we can do it by writing a trigger or a procedure to repeat the merge steps automatically, but that will require a lot of effort and skills.

We can also use the few popular premium software used in the companies to mass merge contacts in Salesforce, which are as follows:

XLconnector
ZaapIT
cloudingo

Salesforce Merge Contacts Permission

If the user doesn’t have permission to merge duplicate contacts in Salesforce, we can manually set up the permission for that particular user to grant them permission to merge the contacts.

In order to merge the contacts in Salesforce, the user must have read, create, edit, delete, view all, and modify permissions on the following objects:

Accounts
Contacts
Duplicate Record Sets

If you want to learn how to grant the above permission to merge duplicate contacts, read the complete article: How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce

How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce

We can merge contacts in Salesforce using the Lightning and Classic user interfaces. It is available in Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions.

Merge Contacts in Salesforce Lightning

The following are the steps to merge contacts in Salesforce Lightning:

1. Login into the Salesforce account in Lightning Interface. Click the “App Launcher” and search for the “Contacts” object.

2. From the list of contact records, find the duplicate contacts that you want to merge. In the below image Kristen Akin has a duplicate record. Click on any one of them.

3. As there is a duplicate contact present in Salesforce for this contact, you will find the message “We found 1 potential duplicate of this contact” in the “Related” tab. Click on the “View Duplicates” button.

4. You will see a window with all the possible duplicates. You can select a maximum of 3 contacts and click the “Next” Button.

5. Select the master data that you want to retain. Click on the “Next” button after selecting the master data in Salesforce.

6. Click on the “Merge” button, and the contacts will be merged together.

In this way, we can learn how to merge records in Salesforce Lightning.

Merge Contacts in Salesforce Classic

Below are the given steps to merge the contacts in Salesforce Classic:

1. Open your Salesforce account in the Classic Interface. Search and Click on the “Accounts” object given on the “Navigation Bar”; if not found, click on the “+” icon, search, and click on the object.

2. Search for the account whose contact you want to merge and click on it.

3. Scroll down to the “Contacts” section and click on the “Merge Contacts” button.

4. Search for the contact names in the “Search Bar” and select them by clicking on the check button next to them. You can select a maximum of three contacts. Then, click on the “Next” button.

5. Select the information that you want to retain and click on the “Merge” button. You will get a confirmation prompt; click on “OK”, and all these contacts will be merged together in Salesforce Classic.

In this way, we can learn how to merge records in Salesforce Classic.

In the video below, I explained how to merge records in Salesforce.

Conclusion

I hope you have understood the concept of Salesforce merging contacts that it eliminates duplicate records and ensures data accuracy. I have explained the concept of Salesforce merging contacts with the mass merge contacts.

Additionally, you will get a step-by-step guide on how to merge records in Salesforce Lightning and Salesforce Classic.