Merge duplicate contacts and companies

The same person can arrive more than once: by email from their work address, by a call from their mobile, and in an import with their name in capitals. Each copy holds part of their history. Merging makes them one contact again, with everything both held. Two companies that are one business merge the same way.

Find the duplicates

On Contacts or Companies, press Possible duplicates. ContactRoll lists the pairs it finds, newest first, each with the reason:

• Contacts with the same email address, whatever its capitals or spaces.
• Contacts with exactly the same phone number.
• Contacts with the same name at the same company.
• Companies with the same name, setting aside capitals, punctuation and an ending such as Inc or LLC.
• Companies with the same phone number.

The list holds only records your role sees, and at most 200 pairs at a time: merge some and the rest come into view. Press Compare and merge to open a pair side by side.

Merge two records

The merge screen asks three things, from top to bottom.

1. Which record stays. The one added first is chosen for you; press the other card to keep it instead. The other is merged into it and then removed.
2. What it keeps. For each field that differs, press the value to keep: name, email, company, owner, status, lifecycle stage, product and app, and time zone for a contact; name, email domain, notes and owner for a company. Your organization's custom fields are asked the same way. Where the record that stays has nothing, the other's value is chosen for you.
3. What is kept from both, without asking: every phone number of both (a number both had is kept once), the strictest consent, and "Do not call" if either was marked.

Under them, the screen counts what moves. Press Merge, read the sentence, and press Merge them. A merge is final, so read the screen before you confirm. You land on the record that stayed.

What moves

Everything about the record being merged moves to the one that stays: its cases, deals, notes, tasks, calls and recordings, emails sent to it, links it followed, sign-ups, survey answers, its timeline, mentions, and the history of its custom fields. Where both were on one deal, list, segment or sequence, the record that stays keeps its place once.

The merge is shown on the timeline of the record that stays, for example "Merged in: Jordan Lee jordan@example.com (added Sep 3, 2026)". The organization's webhooks send contact.merged or company.merged, with the id that stayed and the id that went, so a connected app can follow.

The strictest consent wins

Consent, unsubscribes and email preferences are kept by email address. When the address that stays differs from the other record's:

• An unsubscribe, a spam complaint or a stop added by hand on the other address holds for the address that stays too. A bounce stays with its own address, because it is about that address and not the person.
• "Forget what I clicked", every topic the other address left, and the less frequent of the two email frequencies hold for the address that stays.
• Where either address withdrew its consent, the address that stays is withdrawn too.
• Consent given on the other address speaks only for that address: the address that stays keeps its own consent as it was.

Do not call

A contact's page has Mark "Do not call" for anyone who may change that contact. Once marked, the page says who marked it and when, the contact's numbers show as plain numbers rather than call buttons, and ContactRoll's phone places no call to them. Take it off undoes it, and each change is on their timeline. A call that already happened can still be logged by hand.

Who can merge

Whoever may both change the record that stays and remove the other: the Owner and Administrators, and a role of your own given both permissions. Where a role's reach is narrowed, it must reach both records. Anyone else sees the two side by side and is told why there is no Merge button.