iOS 17 iPhone doesn’t show me the option to merge duplicate contacts

Yay I’m so glad it worked!!

Happy to help.

From your attached image, it looks like you’re in the “All iCloud” List. Click on “Lists” in top left hand corner, select “All Contacts” at the top and try scrolling to the bottom again.

Mine looks like this:

Amazing, thank you and well done!

Demonet wrote:

Apple support, please advise a fix. Please DO NOT (so tired of seeing this in support threads) reply with an article telling us to use the "Duplicates Found/Merge Duplicates" button...because not being able to do that is the issue.

This is a user-to-user support forum. There are no more Community specialists. Apple Support will not be replying to you here. You can contact them directly using the "Support" link at the bottom left of every page of these forums.

Making sure you’re in the “All Contacts” List, scroll all the way to the bottom of your contacts and you should see “[Number] Duplicates Found” in blue text below the last entry. Click the blue text to get to the duplicates menu where you can choose to merge them.

Hope this helps.

You are ACES in my book, and I respect your insights!

I could back everything up and do a full factory reset, but honestly, since that is the only thing that is broken, I am not going to do that. Too much of a bother.

Apple broke something in one of their updates, for way too many users, so I am going to let it ride. It’s been nice “working with” you on this issue! Hope you have a great day!

Actually, one last thing to try mate. Make sure you’re using the “Contacts” app and not the “Phone” app and follow the instructions again.

Fingers crossed this works for you.

Let me know how you go.

Oh yes, I definitely did that, and you were right to comment that. Thank you. :-)

I have also tried cleaning up the Duplicate Contacts via my MacBook Pro. At least that option IS possible, but that process does not work in the way one would hope. It’s still “contact by contact”, and that’s ridiculous since it’s “Apple.”

Google clears up mass duplicate contacts, and so does even “ancient old Yahoo”!

I’ve thought of tinkering around with a backup of all of my contacts, wiping the slate clean on all Apple devices, and then using an Excel spreadsheet to clear things up and then use that “new and improved contact list” …

But this is Apple’s mistake. They need to fix it. We have all spent way too much on their products over the years, and they need to get on the ball.

Hope you have a great day!

Every time I post, I think I’ve found a solution for you but it’s proving much harder than I expected.

I found another thread where someone suggested “Select contacts, choose my card, go back to contacts, and the “duplicates found” button appeared”.

I tried that but the duplicate found button under my card did not appear. I then tried it in the contacts section of the “Phone” app and again no contact button appeared. Strangely enough, I then scrolled down to the bottom of my contacts list in the “phone” app and the duplicates found text was now there too. Previously, it was only at the bottom of the all contacts list through the “contacts” app.

While I fully expect you to come back saying it has not worked, thought you might like to try going into and out of my card and checking again… :)

…. And you would be right, lol.

Honestly, I thought, “that makes sense, why not give it another go?” I’m still sipping my chai latte, lol.

So I followed your instructions, as written, no dice. I even went back and tried again, and refreshed after each action, and still nothing.

Nothing has worked, but you are certainly top-notch in troubleshooting! If I find a solution, I’ll surely share it here, but for now, this is just one gnarly Apple mess.

Another thing you could try that may trigger a reassessment of duplicates is to disable and re-enable contacts from each account, save for the iCloud account.

1. In the contacts app, click on Lists in top left and take note of all the accounts with contact information;

2. In the settings app, go to Contacts > Accounts and click on each of the accounts noted (except for the iCloud account) and toggle off the contacts option in each;

3. Go back to the Contacts app and swipe down while in the Lists page to refresh it (you may need to close the contacts app and reopen to refresh it).

4. Click on “All Contacts” and see if duplicates button is now available under My Card or after last entry (if it is, this will just be a duplicates assessment of your iCloud contact entries);

5. Repeat step 2, this time toggling the contacts option for each noted account to on; and

6. Lastly, repeat steps 3 and 4. If successful, any duplicates assessment should be across all accounts.

Good luck!!

This completely worked for me!!

Resolve duplicate contacts

If two entries for the same person aren’t linked automatically, you can unify them manually.

1. Tap one of the contacts, tap Edit, then tap Link Contacts.
2. Choose the other contact entry to link to, then tap Link.

When you link contacts with different first or last names, the names on the individual cards don’t change, but only one name appears on the unified card. To choose which name appears on the unified card, tap one of the linked cards, tap the contact’s name on that card, then tap Use This Name For Unified Card.

Note: When you link contacts, those contacts aren’t merged. If you change or add information in a unified contact, the changes are copied to each source account where that information already exists.

Has this issue been resolved?

This was a fresh approach to this persistent problem, and I thought I’d give it a go! I appreciate that “someone out there, somewhere, is still trying to get to the bottom of this; however, it has failed on my iPhone 14 Pro Max running iOS 17.4.1 (and all apps are updated every morning).

I followed the instructions, but when I got to the bottom of my contacts list, the total number of contacts is in black and “unclickable.”

Unfortunately, this did not work for me, but thank you for the suggestion! It is appreciated. The “merge duplicate contact” button used to appear at the top of the list (it never worked, but the option once used to be there). Now, it’s nowhere at all.

Still.

Thank you, I thought I tried it both ways, so I took the screenshot of the last attempt. :-)

However, I just did as you suggested, and I got the same result.

This is so weird. Only worse because I have even more contacts outside of Apple, lol