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My iPhone duplicated most of my contacts when I was updating the system. How do I quickly delete all of the duplicates?

How do I delete all of the duplicate contacts that appeared on my iPhone 8 after an update? Is there a ay to do it quickly rather than one at a time?


iPhone 8 Plus, iOS 14

Posted on Nov 9, 2021 12:58 PM

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Posted on Nov 14, 2021 4:24 AM

My icloud.com contacts keep duplicating, over and over, maybe 8 by now and growing, mostly Microsoft outlook contacts, I think. How do I resolve/stop this? Then, how do I mass delete the duplicates. I do not have a MAc. I have iPad, iPhone, and iCloud on dell desktop?

14 replies

Nov 20, 2021 12:31 PM in response to SPLTL

Push will send email to the phone in near real time. It is only available for iCloud accounts and MS Exchange accounts in the built-in Mail app. It is also available for Yahoo and gmail when using the specific apps for those acounts, but not the Mail app.

Outlook also supports Push using the App only


Fetch retrieves mail on a schedule, which you can set.


Manual only retrieves email when you open the Mail app.


You can set FETCH or MANUAL for iCloud and Exchange in the Mail app if you don’t want Push.

Nov 20, 2021 12:32 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

My problem seemed to have something to do with Apple vs MS, I think. It seemed to be my Outlook contacts that were duplicating. I was up to 20some on many. I use Outlook app on iPhone and iPad, but Outlook.com on Dell desktop - no Apple Mail (since work requires Outlook). Had all my contacts on iCloud w Apple though. Soooo, I followed a bunch of suggestions which said to make sure contacts were ONLY being accepted from ONE source, for me iCloud - on BOTH my iPhone and iPad. Then I cleaned up my contacts list (using Cleanup Contact Duplicates app), and so far 🤞🤞🤞 it’s holding…. SCARY though!

My iPhone duplicated most of my contacts when I was updating the system. How do I quickly delete all of the duplicates?

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