Duplicate Contacts issue on Outlook.com

Just when I thought it was safe....

I just had the same garbled contacts problem that servantoftheKing describes, above. This is new to me. I agree with Dave that this is a problem in syncing on the server side.

After a few weeks of Contacts stability, this afternoon I imported my full contacts file to Outlook 2016 desktop from the original Outlook 2007 export of March of this year into a CSV file. I was really hoping that the problem had been solved and that Contacts was working right.

The contacts came in completely garbled. Each contact that had been a row on the spreadsheet was crisscrossed and garbled with the others. Incorrect emails and just crazy mapping. Totally useless. I encountered other issues as I deleted the contacts, but I'm hoping it's all gone now.

I didn't use Windows Mail, but I did look at Outlook.com to see what was happening. The contacts synced in the same garbled way.

Previously I tried uninstalling Windows 10 Mail from my desktop, but that completely crashed Outlook desktop. It scared me so much that I'm no longer open to trying it, since the damage was so severe I had to rebuild the machine. I'm not touching Windows Mail again on the desktop.

My alternate Outlook profile (testing, testing), into which I imported the same CSV file months ago (but no email) does not sync with anything and is perfect. So this is not a desktop issue, but you all know that. The email and calendar seems fine across both profiles and the calendar syncs with my iPhone.

I regret descending further into this cauldron of contacts madness. This product just isn't ready for prime time. I didn't plan to be a beta tester for this immature product.

FWIW I uninstalled the Windows 10 mail, calendar and people apps, because even though I did not use them (I use Outlook 2016 as part of an Office 365 subscription) I got the impression they were syncing stuff in the background, and perhaps messing up, so it seemed prudent to get rid of them. Removal instructions can be found here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/224798/how-to-uninstall-windows-10s-built-in-apps-and-how-to-reinstall-them/

I too saw the weird "majorly scrambled" Outlook contacts when I used Outlook 2016 on Windows 10, when I was experiencing the duplicate contacts problem, so I stopped using that too. So now I only use Outlook 2016 on Mac and Outlook.com in a Web browser, as the entire experience the past six months has made me paranoid - it's working for me now so I don't rock the boat.

Mind you, I am 98% convinced this is/was entirely a server side problem (although perhaps exacerbated by client errors) as I went weeks using only the Web client and I still got multiple duplicates no matter how many times I deleted and purged them.

However even though I am no longer experiencing the duplicate contacts problem, I won't launch Outlook 2016 on Windows ... I'm simply too paranoid to risk it (and Mac is my primary platform anyway).

Dave Ings

This is issue is definitely not over yet. We (I speak on behalf of our family: we use one email address) have been battling it for a week now.

It started with Windows Live Mail. We have been using Windows Live Mail since it was provided as an upgrade to Outlook Express. So we were definitely sorry to see it go. Microsoft said that it could quit working anytime after June 30 but it wasn't until August 16 that our account actually quit syncing email with Outlook.com.

At that point I tried adding our account to the Mail app (in Windows 10) that I already used to access my personal email addresses. It did not correctly sync our large folder/sub-folder hierarchy. It also would not sync some sub-folders until you individually clicked on them and told it to sync.

Finally I decided to give Outlook 2013 a try. We already have it on 2 of our 4 computers so why not use it at least on them? I added our account to Outlook 2013 and the syncing began. Sometime soon after, contacts started getting scrambled. In our case it is not just duplicate contacts; they are majorly scrambled. "John Doe" shows up with multiple email addresses including his own plus any random one stolen from another contact. When a contact had no last name (e.g. a company or other entity) it would choose one from another contact at random usually pulling in both associated email addresses plus some extras. All original contacts seemed to stay intact. It made duplicates though and did its scrambling on them.

The problem seems to have been associated with Windows Live Mail. It seems that when ever we would start the WLM program (to look at an old email) the contacts would silently sync in the background (even though emails no longer do). Each time we used WLM the number of duplicates grew and so did the scrambling.

When we caught on to that, we tried to make sure we temporarily turned off the internet connection anytime that we used WLM.

We deleted ALL the contacts from Outlook 2013 and from Outlook.com. I went into "Restore deleted contacts". It said "You have 1692 contacts that you can restore." I individually clicked on everyone of them (you can't select all) and purged them from its memory. But when I clicked on "clean up contacts", they all still seem to be there as jumbled as ever.

I tried adding 2 new contacts in Outlook 2013. After letting them sync to Outlook.com, they appeared intact. But after waiting less than an hour, Outlook.com had re-created 3 other unrelated contacts out of the ones I had deleted. And they weren't single. One was 7 duplicate (scrambled) contacts linked together and another was 10.

So, all I know to do is to wait. Hopefully the fixes that have come to the rest of you will get to us eventually. It appears to me that this is perhaps at least part of the reason that Microsoft discontinued WLM support. I had read somewhere that the way Windows Live Mail worked with groups was different from the way Outlook 2013 and Outlook.com did and that they could not be made compatible. That is also maybe why Microsoft has been holding off in providing grouping capabilities in the Windows 10 Mail and People apps. I certainly hope that they allow groups soon in them. That is the MAIN reason that the Mail app cannot work for us as the primary email client at this point: we email to a group of 75+ frequently.

P.S. I was very glad to finally find more people with the same problem. I have been working on this problem for a week and only finally today found this thread dedicated to it. Part of the problem was I wasn't sure where the root cause was: Windows Live Mail, Outlook 2013, or Outlook.com

Ditto.

Probably try the suggestions in this thread and adapt them to your situation. I wasn't crazy about using the iPhone as a separate place for contacts, but I'm retired and not that busy so it worked OK for me for a while.  I tried some other workarounds, but those failed later as MS must have made changes to their cloud syncing and Outlook.

I haven't talked to tech support for three months, so you might try them to see if they have updated information and protocols.

I wish I could be more helpful. It's been very frustrating and a big time sink. I'm really waiting for them to get it working consistently as it is supposed to.