Duplicate Contacts issue on Outlook.com

I'm getting hurt by this too, and it isn't just cosmetic. The duplicates seem to often drop the email address, and the result is that I literally can't resolve those people when I try to email them.

I strongly suspect Microsoft is stalling on this one. I've never had a problem with Exchange, and I see that Microsoft is dumping the current Outlook.com for a proper Exchange solution, so no doubt they are hanging out for that to happen and hoping bugs like this are left behind.

If so, I'd like to see Microsoft offer an early adopter option so those of us being impacted by this bug can choose to get migrated ahead of the rest of the regions scheduled.

Hi Johnson,

We apologize for not being able to address your concern in a timely manner.

I would require more information to help you better.

1. From which email system are you accessing your account? Is it through the Microsoft Office Outlook or Mail Client or web browser?
2. If you are accessing your account through a web browser then, from which web browser are you trying to access your account?
3. If you are accessing your account through a web browser then,what do you see on the top left corner after logging into your account? Does it shows Outlook.com or Outlook Mail (Preview) or Outlook Mail or Outlook Email?

To know which email system you are using, refer to the following Wiki article created by JMH3143. (MS - MVP) on **Email Systems... Differences explained**.

If you are accessing your contacts through the Outlook.com web based interface, then refer to the section: Clean up duplicate contacts from this link and check if it helps.

Hope the above information helps. Reply with necessary information and the result to help you further.

I share your pain and see no fix in the short term. I too will clean out all contacts on my Mac Outlook 2016, on my Outlook 2013 and on Outlook.com. I purge everything from the "Deleted Files held for 30 days bin". I import fresh and verified contacts csv file with 241 contacts. All fine and I check everywhere and it is 241 with complete contacts info including categories. Wait a day plus and I now have 5275 contacts. I think I need to call Mulder and Scully for this problem because anything they come up with is going to be better and more entertaining than what we have already.

I migrated to my GMAIL account and have my outlook mail forwarded there. I have also made the outlook.com mail address as default in GMAIL so my responses will have the Outlook.com address despite coming from GMAIL. This is a compromise I will need to live with as at least I don't have this weird contacts problem with GMAIL.

The other thing that Outlook.com drove me batty was that despite the nice style and appearance, the display would always shake or tremble, not all the time, but enough to make it uncomfortable. It is not the laptops as it does it on my MacBook, Windows laptops, and Outlook for iOS. Almost as it was suffering from too much coffee! Also, my folders would disappear and reappear after a refresh.

Again none of the problems mentioned above happen with my GMAIL account (I use the web access via Chrome). So I guess this is the way it will be for the time being.

By the way, I don't think I had this problem prior to the migration to the new Outlook.com setup. I think the old style and even when in Preview mode, I was spared the joys of these issues.

FCG

I'm another Outlook user in severe pain since upgrading to Office 365 about 10 weeks ago from a very stable Outlook 2007 with manual iTunes contacts sync to my iPhone. Since the upgrade, I'm experiencing the same bizarre, unexplained Contacts duplication as described by others on this thread.

I've worked with online chat and Global Escalation Services, logging about 10-12 hours. I've deleted and purged contacts in Outlook Mail and Outlook 2016 desktop, created a new mail profile for Outlook 2016, disconnected from Skype, restored Windows 10, reinstalled Office 365 Home Personal, stopped syncing to iPhone, entered contacts manually to eliminate possibility of embedded information, not reinstalled my antivirus upon restoring Win 10, deleted old .oab and .ost files, stopped continuous backups (in case it might have created a sync loop), and otherwise done everything I can think of (or learned about from community boards, support, and google searches) since the beginning of March 2016.

I'm at a total loss as to why, approximately 24-48 hours after entering contacts information, Outlook has repeatedly duplicated most of the contacts, some to a total of 9 times, but some are not duplicated. Not only that, but the mystery sync retrieves really old contacts that I've deleted/purged.

My desktop Outlook Contacts are now unmanageable. For my iPhone, I'm running a workaround of a separate contact list on the phone that never syncs with Outlook. I pull down Outlook mail on the phone via my Exchange account, plus the calendar. Since I need the contacts most frequently on the phone, it's OK for now and appears stable.

My best guess is that there is a cache somewhere, perhaps on the server, that is called periodically to perform a sync of these contacts. Still, I would think that the contacts are all date-stamped in some way, so I don't know why they would reappear to override the most recent contacts list.

Can someone from Microsoft get an answer that gets at the heart of this issue?

Hi,

We appreciate your time and effort for getting back to us.

As you are accessing your account through the Microsoft Office 365 Outlook, I suggest you to post your query in Office forum for further assistance with the issue. We have a dedicated team to help you with this type of issues. Follow the below link to post your query in Office forum.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/office/forum/office\_365hp-outlook

Hope the above information helps.