Having a duplicate contact consumes unnecessary space and creates confusion. Wondering how to merge contacts in salesforce? Read the complete blog, we have shared all the possible ways to merge contacts in salesforce.
- How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce Lightning
- How to Merge contacts in Salesforce Classic
- How to Merge Contacts in different Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Enable Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Mass Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts with Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Sync Contacts from Salesforce to Outlook
How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce
Contacts in salesforce hold the information of people associated with the business. These people could be customers, dealers, individuals, etc. Two major reasons for merging contacts in salesforce are: –
- Duplicacy – Duplicate records are saved in salesforce
- Contact joining request raised by customer
Startup USA textiles have been running successfully for the last 5 years. The CEO has decided to upgrade their systems on the occasion of 5 year anniversary. While optimizing the system before the upgrade the team found duplicate records.
Since there were no duplicate7 checking parameters in the initial 1st year of the company so the time returning customers record has been logged twice.
You are the system administrator in USA textiles and you have been assigned a duty to merge the records in such a way that maximum custom information can be retained.
Do you want to know how to merge contacts in salesforce? Keep reading the blog as we have answered all the questions that may arise in your mind.
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How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce Lightning
Salesforce lightning allows users to create salesforce apps even with no programming knowledge. It has components that can be added and the app will be created. Salesforce lightning has all the modern web features which fasten the loading.
Note: – The steps to merge contacts in salesforce lightning will be the same for merging the same and different contact names.
Do you want to learn how to merge contacts in salesforce lightning? Follow these steps: –
Step 1: From the contacts, click on the record whose duplicates you want to merge. In the below image Kristen Akin has a duplicate record. Click on any one of them.

Step 2: If there are any duplicate contacts present salesforce lightning will display this kind of message on the user’s profile in Salesforce. Click on the View Duplicates button.

Step 3: On clicking the View Duplicates button a window will appear where all the possible duplicates will appear. You can select a maximum of 3 contacts and click on the Next Button.
Repeat the steps multiple times if you have more than 3 contacts to merge all of them together or you can use any third-party tool.

Step 4: Select the master data that you want to retain. Click on the Next button after selecting the master data in salesforce.

Step 5: Click on the Merge button. The contacts will be merged together and you can verify the details by going through the contact information in salesforce.

In this way, we have learned how to merge contacts in salesforce lightning. Do you want to learn how to merge accounts in salesforce lightning?
Read the Blog – How to merge accounts in salesforce lightning.
How to Merge contacts in Salesforce Classic
Salesforce classic is a traditional interface for the salesforce CRM platform and it is being used ever since salesforce is released. Contacts in salesforce classic are comes under the accounts.
Suppose a lead has been converted and now it has created a duplicate record in the salesforce. Now you have been assigned a task to identify and merge these records from the salesforce.
leads can be merged with another leads in the contact with another contact. follow these steps to convert the leads and merge the contacts:-
Step 1: From the all leads click on the name whose duplicate value you want to merge. In the below image, we have selected Ms. Kristen Akin.

Step 2: On clicking the name you will enter user details. Click on the Find Duplicates button present in the Lead Detail settings.

Step 3: Click on the Convert Lead button on the search for duplicates page in salesforce.

Step 4: Select the Account Name and click on the convert button in the salesforce.

Step 5: On the page, scroll down to the Contacts. There click on the Merge Contacts button in salesforce to merge the contacts.

Step 6: Search for the contact names from the search bar and select them by clicking on the check button next to it. You can select maximum three contacts.


Step 7: Select the information that you want to retain and click on the Merge button.

On clicking the merge button there will be a confirmation prompt, click on ok and all these contacts will be merged together in salesforce classic.
So, In this way, we have learned how to merge contacts in salesforce classic. Do you want to learn how to merge accounts in salesforce classic?
Read the Blog – How to merge accounts in salesforce classic.
How to Merge Contacts from different Accounts in Salesforce
Let’s understand the problem statement first, and for this please refer to the below image. Accounts hold multiple contact information.
- The account name in orange – USA Enterprise
- The account name in blue – American bank corp.

Suppose A and B are the contacts of USA Enterprise and C & D are the contacts of American bank corp. Now the question is can we merge A with C or A with D?
Yes, we can merge the contacts in different accounts and if you have permission to access the contacts of different accounts then by following the steps in the above section – How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce one can merge the contacts from different accounts.
How to Enable Merge Contacts in Salesforce
You are a system administrator at USA Enterprises and today you received a request to enable merge contacts in salesforce. How do I give permission to merge contacts in salesforce? Is that question bothering you?
We got you covered, follow the steps shared in this section.
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
We have explained how to provide permission for Accounts and Duplicate Record Sets in this blog – How to Enable Merge Accounts in Salesforce
Service Setup -> Permission Sets -> create or edit new permission set -> Object Settings -> Search for Contacts -> edit object permissions check the boxes for all -> save.
Assign this permission to the user of choice in the Permission Set Assignments section.
With this, we have learned how to enable merge contacts in salesforce and answered the question – How do I give permission to merge contacts in salesforce.
How to Mass Merge Contacts in Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM company headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. The objective of the company is to provide software that can help businesses in creating and maintain relationships with customers.
wondering How to Merge Multiple Contacts in Salesforce? Read the complete blog.
Salesforce does not facilitate mass merging contacts, you can merge a maximum of three contacts in one go.
You can either write a trigger or procedure to repeat the merge steps automatically but that will require a lot of effort and skills. The easiest way to mass merge contacts in salesforce is by using third-party applications :
Here is the list of a few popular software used in the companies:-
- XLconnector
- ZaapIT
- cloudingo
These are the premium software to perform mass merge contacts in salesforce. With this, we have understood How to Bulk Merge Contacts in Salesforce.
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How to Sync Contacts from Salesforce to Outlook
Microsoft Outlook is a software used to read, record, and maintain information. It is a Microsoft product and comes with an office suite. It is another cloud-based software used by companies to store contacts.
Additionally, it allows sending emails and scheduling meetings with contacts. Wondering, how to sync contacts from salesforce to outlook? Follow these steps: –
Step 1: From the salesforce dashboard, click on the gear icon and select Service Setup from there.
Step 2: From the Quick Tools, search for Outlook Integration And Sync. These names may change by the time you are reading this blog so it would be better to search for outlook.
Step 3: Slide the slider present next to the Outlook Integration to enable outlook.
Step 4: Download outlook by clicking on the Microsoft AppSource. Once downloaded set up the output by filling in the required details.

So in this way, contacts can be synchronized from salesforce to outlook.
Read How to Create an Opportunity in Salesforce
Conclusion
Contacts redundancy is a severe problem in salesforce, but in this tutorial, we have learned how to merge duplicate contacts in salesforce. We have understood how to merge salesforce contacts on both Lightning and Classic user experiences. Also, we have covered these topics:
- How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts in Salesforce Lightning
- How to Merge contacts in Salesforce Classic
- How to Merge Contacts in different Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Enable Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Mass Merge Contacts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts with Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Merge Contacts from Different Accounts in Salesforce
- How to Sync Contacts from Salesforce to Outlook
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I am Bijay Kumar, the founder of SalesforceFAQs.com. Having over 10 years of experience working in salesforce technologies for clients across the world (Canada, Australia, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, etc.). I am a certified salesforce administrator and expert with experience in developing salesforce applications and projects. My goal is to make it easy for people to learn and use salesforce technologies by providing simple and easy-to-understand solutions. Check out the complete profile on About us.