Phone Link not showing Contact Names....again

This is for Outlook Windows application and VBA. You may connect Outlook application to the account in Outlook.com and then you have access to your contacts from it. There is a folder in Contacts ending with "(contacts synced by Link to Windows)" and in this directory you have those duplicated contacts. Run macro, select this folder with duplicates and wait.

Thank you Zoono for your reply.

Before I kick this off, can you confirm this is to remove my duplicates in Outlook.com, or is it to repair/remove duplicates in my MS Phone Link??

The subject matter is "Question has a reply: Phone Link not showing Contact Names....again" and i have both these issues at the moment. Albeit the Phone Link issues seems to have improved. :)

Cheers,

Barry

Workaround to remove duplicates using VBA in Outlook.

Sub DeleteDuplicateContactsInSelectedFolder()
Dim i As Long
Dim n As Long
Dim Message As String
Dim Items As Object
Dim AppOL As Object
Dim NS As Object
Dim Folder As Object
Set Items = CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
Set AppOL = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")
Set NS = AppOL.GetNamespace("MAPI")
Set Folder = NS.PickFolder
'Set Folder = NS.Folders("*** Email address is removed for privacy ***").Folders("Contacts").Folders("Galaxy S23 Ultra (contacts synced by Link to Windows)")
If Folder.DefaultItemType <> 2 Then Exit Sub
n = Folder.Items.Count
Dim duplicates As Integer
duplicates = 0
For i = n To 1 Step -1
    On Error Resume Next
    Contact = Folder.Items(i).FirstName
        If Items.Exists(Contact) = True Then
        Folder.Items(i).Delete
        duplicates = duplicates + 1
    Else
        Items.Add Contact, True
End If
Next i
If duplicates > 0 Then
MsgBox "Removed contacts number: " & duplicates, vbOKOnly
End If
ExitSub:
Set Folder = Nothing
Set NS = Nothing
Set AppOL = Nothing
End Sub

I have had many smart phones over the years connected to exchange and have managed to get several duplicates of a lot of my contacts. I have nearly 3000 contact records and most records had between 3 and 5 duplicates ON THE PHONE, and not in Outlook (Exchange Server). Since I transition away from a Windows phone to Android the problem was hidden by the Android mail client since it "Merged" the duplicates.

After making backups, I recently Unmerged everything and deleted all records stored on the phone or in Google mail. Now I only have my contacts from Outlook and all of my mysterious email contact issues disappeared! Yay!

This has been a continuous series of small issues over the years which now appear to be fully resolved.

As an added bonus, Phone Link now shows the correct names instead of numbers.

A couple of follow ups.

* One of the issues seems to be contacts that don't have a "full name" assigned on its contact card.

* You can remove duplicate entries by exporting the contacts to disk, deleting the contacts within Outlook, and reimporting them from disk with the "do not import duplicates" option. This is in MS's advice database.

* You can remove categories from multiple contacts by selecting them, right click categorize, and selecting Clear all. There is also a way to remove a category from the entire database from a settings page in this manner.

* I have deleted the sync'd contact folder on the PC several times and it is recreated without incident.

* My own name is listed several times in the contact database. It isn't recognized in PhoneLink when I send a text to myself. I guess I have to fix that.

Hopefully, that helps some people. The issue we all experience is with PhoneLink's sync function, it seems and finding the correct structure of the contact database to help.

I wish the contact categories when displayed on PhoneLink were not so hard to find. I find it very cumbersome for a large group of contacts.