Linking phone to PC creates duplicate contacts

Happened to me as well - six thousand duplicates from about 150 contacts. I managed to deal with it by resetting the Phone Link app in Win 11 on both my PCs, and then ignoring prompts to re-link my phone. Next I installed the Outlook Desktop email client (I have a MS365 subscription) on one of my PCs. The duplicates appeared in a folder named "<nameofphone> Synced by Phone Link". I highlighted the whole lot, deleted them, then deleted the "Synced by Phone Link" folder. After a while the deletions started syncing to my phone, and by the following day the duplicates had all gone. They also disappeared from the Outlook web client. My genuine contacts were untouched and the duplicates have not come back. There is no way I will re-enable Phone Link until MS acknowledge this bug and confirm it is fixed.

I did report the bug via the Feedback hub, and had a reply a couple of days later. I was obvious from the response that they had not read my original report properly. I replied again explaining exactly what had happened, and also the steps I had since taken to fix my problem. They said they were glad I had fixed and the conversation ended there. I did not have the impression that they were at all interested.

Hello, I'm Greg, here to help you with this.

It could be a bug. Are the duplicates in Windows 11, Android or both? Since it syncs the data between them, it should be in both. So you can merge duplicates in Android and see if it sync's to PC:
https://support.google.com/contacts/answer/7078...

Let me know what happens. If you want to report this as a bug to Microsoft use the Feedback Hub app in Start Menu where developers are tasked to process consumer feedback. They will not even see it here. Microsoft developers DO read feedback from customers that comes in via the Feedback Hub, so that is a great way to share your thoughts on how to better serve you as a customer.

Feel free to ask back any questions. Based on the results you post back, I will have other suggestions if necessary.

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This happens to me, 14,000 contacts from a base of 356 original contacts. Some contacts copied or synced to my phone, with each having over 100 duplicates. This is definitely a bug. Has happned to me 3 times now, and no shortcut as must delete them all then restore individual contacts ... for me this is 365 contacts. Over 3 hours of work to fix their problem.

Sync contacts is gone from current, up to date, Windows 10 Phone Link. (3. April 2023)

Same for me! Some contacts has numerous copies now. I went from 800 regular contacts to 3000+ with duplicates.

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