Find Duplicates

Sometimes the same person ends up in your directory twice: they were imported from two lists, entered once as “Pepe” and once as “José”, or added at the door and again at the office. Find Duplicates (in Settings) shows those people side by side so you can merge them into one record.

Administrators and Coordinators can use it — anyone who can edit and delete members.

What it finds

• Same email, same phone (even written differently) or same name — almost certainly the same person.
• Similar name — a typo (“Jonatan” / “Jonathan”), a nickname (“Pepe” / “José”, “Bill” / “William”), a short name (“Ale” / “Alejandra”, “Juanito” / “Juan”), or one surname of two (“María López” / “María López García”). These are marked Check before merging: two brothers or a mother and daughter can have very similar names.

Merging two records

1. Compare the two cards: name, email, phone, birth date, address, sex, status, when each was added and whether either has a HolyCRM login.
2. Choose Keep this one on the record to keep. HolyCRM picks the one with a login, or else the older one, but you can change it.
3. Where both records have a different value (two phone numbers, two spellings of a name…), each side shows Use this: pick the value that should stay.
4. Click Merge and confirm.

When you merge:

• Everything linked to the other record moves to the one you keep: attendance and check-ins, small groups and ministries, serving dates and confirmations, giving, event registrations, guardians and children, visitor and prayer assignments, and their login.
• Blank fields are filled in from the other record (an email, a phone, a birth date…). Tags and guardians are combined, notes are joined, and custom fields are merged. Where both records have a value, the one you picked with Use this stays (the kept record’s, unless you chose the other).
• If both people were in the same group, event or service, they end up there once.
• The other record is deleted.

Someone entered three times? After the first merge, the list shows the kept record paired with the third copy: merge again.

Undoing a merge

Recent merges, at the top of the page, lists the merges of the last 30 days. Undo brings the removed person back as they were, with everything that was linked to them, and puts back the kept person’s details — except anything someone changed since, which stays. After 30 days a merge can no longer be undone.

Both have a login? Merge isn’t possible until one of them is removed. Go to Users, remove the login you don’t need, then come back and merge.

Not the same person

If the pair is two different people, click Not the same person and it disappears from the list. This is remembered on that device and browser only: another administrator, or you on another computer, may see the pair again.

Tips

• After an import, the summary screen has a Find Duplicates button.
• The list shows 25 pairs at a time; Show more loads the next ones.
• Importing again won’t create new duplicates of people who are already there: the import preview spots them and lets you skip or update them.