Linking phone to PC creates duplicate contacts

I am having the same issue. I think it started a few weeks ago when I changed phones. I have a Samsung and the phone also shows multiple entries for each contact.

17Apr2023 update: Considering the volume of issues everyone has posted, I poked around a bit more and discovered that setting a synchronization filter helped a lot - like 0 (zero) contacts in the "<name> Galaxy S8 (contacts synced by Link to Windows)" file and my correct quantity of (no duplicate) Contacts while Phone Link appears to work well. My steps: Open Outlook desktop. Click on Contacts to display my regular/normal list of contacts in the Contacts file plus the file entitled "<name> Galaxy S8 (contacts synced by Link to Windows)", Right click the Link to Windows file. Select Properties, then the Synchronization tab, then Filter. Add a filter. In my case, I tried two different filters with the same result of zero contacts in the "Link to Windows" file: 1) Enter my last name in the Search for the word(s) field, then Apply; or, 2) Click on "More Choices", then enter a criterion that will exclude all contacts. The result in both cases were zero contacts in the "Link to Windows" file, no unusual behavior with the rest of my contacts and no duplicates. Note that I did not check Outlook web yet.

Hi.

Thank you for reporting the issue. We are sorry to hear that you are having this issue. We are looking into this and will get back to you as soon as we have something to share. In the meantime, could you please share when did you enabled your contacts syncing? Did you do it in Outlook or in Link to Windows or in both? Your answer will further help our investigation. Thank you for your patience.

My problem with multiplication of contacts began about two weeks ago when I enabled Contact sync in Link to Windows. I already had my Outlook contacts synching with the Contacts app on my Samsung phone for a long time and it was working fine. I have now uninstalled Link to Windows from my phone and manually unmerged all contacts on my phone and deleted the duplicates. I was left with the orphan contacts on Outlook on the web, even after I deleted them from the Windows Outlook app. However, I just noticed that the orphaned contacts have now disappeared from the web version of Outlook.

I am not game to reinstall Link to Windows on my phone, but I can live without it.

An observation: All of the duplicated contacts appeared to be ones with only a first name or a last name, not both first and last name, or they were merged on the phone with a contact that had only first or last name. Perhaps there is a bug in how Outlook compares contact names with existing contacts when synching?

I only enabled contact sync in the Link to Windows settings on my Surface Duo 2, no where else.

It had been enabled for weeks without issue, then one day I noticed the repetitive contacts.