A few weeks ago I had a Contacts database meltdown when I uploaded my Mac Address Book to Google and then synced both with Plaxo. Don’t ask me why; it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I figured that if any duplicates resulted, then as a premium Plaxo subscriber I would be able to zap them with their de-duper.

At the end of my little syncing “experiment”, instead of approximately 800 contacts, I suddenly had over 2000. Not only were most of my contacts duplicated (even deca-plicated in some instances), but most of the duplicated contacts did not contain the same information. For instance, one entry might hold a contact’s name and phone number, and the other would include the contact’s name and address. Because of this, Plaxo’s de-duper saw them all as individual entries. I had a freaking mess on my hands, and I had no idea how to fix it.

Don’t ask about the cussing that ensued, just understand that delicate ears would have definitely been offended. I mean, seriously…have you ever seen anything like this?

That’s when I discovered that Google had no easy way to merge or de-dupe contacts, although one was supposedly coming soon.

After spending two frustrating days trying to compile and merge the mess, I wound up doing a full restore on my Mac Address Book and Plaxo account from Time Machine. I thought about deleting my Google Contacts and re-uploading, but then I decided not to tempt fate and sync them again. Since I don’t sync Google Contacts with my handheld, having this mess won’t necessarily hurt anything…but it sure looks inefficient and I’ll admit it – I am anal enough that it bothers me.

Today I discovered that Google had quietly installed a Merge feature. While I honestly don’t know when (or if)  I will take the time to merge my mess, I thought that it might be something that could come in handy for others whose contacts weren’t quite so toasted.

Basically, you now have the option of selecting the contacts that need to be merged, and then clicking the new “Merge these XX contacts” link.

This pulls up an editable screen where you can make sure that you don’t have the same information listed 20 different ways.

After merging, you’ll have one lovely finished contact.

I just don’t think that I have the patience to do this 800+ more times. :sigh:

And we won’t even get into what happened with my Calendar; that will be a battle for another day.