Linking phone to PC creates duplicate contacts

Paul, really appreciate the work you have done on this. Did you get some kind of ticket number from the Microsoft support staff that I could give them when I contact them.

Cheers..............Neil

You're welcome! There was a ticket number indeed, but that only identifies the individual case session with me, it is not universal.

Follow these steps to open a chat session with Microsoft customer support:

1. Open Outlook.com
2. Click on the Help menu item.
3. Click on the ?-icon.
4. In the Search field, type "duplicate contacts" and press enter.
5. At the bottom, below "Still need help?", click on the "Yes" button.
6. Choose a support option: "Chat with a support agent".
7. Write a brief description of the problem (max 80 characters).
8. Enter your email.
9. add an attachment: I did so: I created a pdf file with a description of the problem and two screenshots.
10. Click on the Confirm button.

You will then be connected to a chat session with Microsoft Support. Make sure you ask them to read your pdf file as part of your first answer to them.

The problem was resolved for me by helpful Microsoft support staff. I reported the issue via the Help menu of Outlook.com, and then via a chat conversation. After a while, the folder holding the thousands of orphaned duplicate contacts was gone. Assume they manually removed it from their side, because I did not have to do anything myself.

II had this same issue, attempted many options to resolve. I found the repetitive contacts are tied to Android apps with contact sync ability - Viber, Zoom, WhatsApp etc. If you unlink the a contact profile, you will see these break out separately, able to delete but in my case this was over 500 for 1 person. Much too time consuming.

If you don't have time to "cleanup", you can can customize the Contacts view (Triple dot) and choose only your primary accounts, remove Social Networks/apps with contacts and the extra contacts will not be shown, they are only hidden.

What didn't work:

• Turned off Contact Sync in Link to PC - no change
• Desktop Outlook - Deleted "PC link Sync" Contacts Group
• outlook.com - Deleting Contacts labeled Synced via Linked to PC
• Disabling Contact sync for Android Apps - Nothing was removed

BACKUP:

• Whether Google or MS account - Export your contacts to CSV or PST to have a backup in case
• Check your social app - some you have to backup yourself like Viber & WhatsApp

What DID work:

• Link to PC: Disable Contact Sync
• Removed each PC linked in "Link to PC"
• Removed the Device on the PC
• Individually I cleared the storage for each affected app in Settings > Apps.
• Uninstalled each App that had contact sync where repetitive contacts existed.
• Confirmed in the Contacts app they were gone, not listed as an account
• Confirmed primary accounts intact - count was accurate
• Re-install each App, sign in, restore respective backup
• Confirmed in Contacts no repetitive contacts
• Re-linked Phone to PC using Link to PC - Leaving sync contacts OFF

Update from last post: Unfortunately, as I thought, today the contacts are still present via the outlook.com web interface but are gone from the Outlook local client (synced) - these are definitely now orphaned objects, and the only means of deletion appears to be manually 10 at a time....

We are also left with an orphaned category (Phone name, Contact synced by Link to Windows) which is visible under the contact list, but not under outlook.com categories; this also can't be deleted.

I'm surprised this hasn't been more widely reported as a bigger issue, but to those that are affected (and who have noticed yet, depending on how they filter contacts on their phone), it is no joke having to manually delete 23,000+ entries....

An update to my earlier post: not fixed... :(

I have now installed Outlook - Microsoft 365 (Family) 64-bit client and connected to my outlook.com account to try to delete the contacts from there (ALL contacts; my actual contacts are safe in my Google account). This did display the new Category under synced Contacts named 'David's S23+ (contacts synced by Link to Windows)' and I was able to select and delete it....

...so, in the Desktop client, the duplicated contacts (and Category) have now gone (after double checking desktop sync had worked, and deleting, reinstalling & reconnecting to my account), HOWEVER, they have NOT gone from my Outlook.com web account and are still stuck there with the only way to manually delete being a few at a time.

My hope is that the sync may take some time to complete across all cloud servers (maybe overnight??), as this seemed to work for Fredrik70 in a possible solution post earlier in the thread (thanks), but am concerned these may now just be orphaned objects only actionable from the outlook.com web client :(

Will post an update tomorrow if any changes...Thanks to everyone who has posted so far with this problem.