Cleaning contact data
Remove duplicate records, merge contact histories, and apply bulk tag or status changes to keep your CRM accurate over time.
On this page
Over time, contacts accumulate from multiple sources and the same person can end up in more than one record. Use the deduplication and bulk-update tools to consolidate duplicate records and keep fields, tags, and lifecycle stages consistent across your contact list.
Finding and merging duplicates
If the same person ends up in more than one record, use the deduplication tool in the CRM. You select the records to merge; matching is not automatic. When you confirm a merge:
- The surviving record keeps its details and fills any blanks from the other record; their tags and their donation, event and volunteer totals are combined.
- The other record's notes, tasks and activity history move to the surviving record, and the other record is removed. A merge cannot be undone.
To remove a record you no longer need instead of merging it, delete it; a deleted contact can be restored for 30 days (see CRM basics).
Bulk tag updates
From the contacts list, select any set of contacts and apply or remove a tag in a single action. This is the fastest way to standardize labels after an import or to label everyone in a filtered segment.
Bulk status and lifecycle changes
You can also apply a lifecycle stage or status change to a selection of contacts at once. Updates run in batches of 50, with up to three batches processing at a time, and progress is streamed in real time. If an individual contact fails, only that contact is skipped; the rest of the batch continues normally.
When to clean vs. when to reimport
Use the merge tool when you have a small number of known duplicates. If you discover widespread duplication (for example, the same list was imported twice under different columns), it is faster to fix the source file and reimport with correct field mapping rather than merging records one pair at a time.
Why this matters
A clean contact list means your segments reflect real people, not inflated counts from duplicate rows. Accurate records also ensure that donation history, event attendance, and volunteer activity all appear on the right timeline, which makes your reporting and outreach trustworthy.