Duplicate Contacts Keep Reappearing

WLM V. 2009 Build 14.0.8089.0726 on desktop running XP.  Nearly half of my
1500 contacts seem to be duplicates, triplicates or worse.  I went trhough
and removed about 400, but next time I started up WLM, I was back up to about
1500.  This has been going on for some time.  I cannot figure out what is
feeding the deleted contacts back in.  Can anyone help me before I lose my
mind?

Are you signed into a Live identity?

Are you signed into a Live identity?  (If you are signed in,
details of the Identity will appear towards the right side of the
WLMail toolbar, near the top of the window.  Otherwise, the
toolbar will provide an option to sign in.)

I suspect WLMail has imported your address book from Outlook
Express or Windows Mail  and then, it has synchronized with your
Contacts on the remote server at live.com.  If so, the following
solution should resolve the problem:

1.    Close WLMail

2.    Use your browser to sign into the relevant account at
http://mail.live.com.

3.    Click on "Options", followed by "More Options".

4.    Scroll down and select "Clean up duplicate contacts"

5.    Click on each name in turn, and delete or merge obvious
duplicates.

6.    Sign out from your Live account

Open WLMail, make sure the program has signed into your Live
identity.  Then, perform "Sync All" (from the Toolbar or by
pressing Ctrl/F5 together).  Allow sufficient time for
synchronization to complete.

The contact list in WLMail should now display the same
information as the on-line version.

Fyi....

Fyi....
You might ensure that the contacts in the prior email client are less than 1500 prior to opening WLM and if the prior contact
client was Outlook Express' Address book(use OE to export the contacts to a csv file as insurance)

Perform the above before proceeding with the following

Read all of the below prior to performing and see Note at end.

If using a Live ID to logon to Windows Live in WLM then see below, if not do not perform.

1. Find the wab file on the XP system(make a copy, save to a different location and rename the original with an *old extension
2. Find the OE message store and rename Folders.dbx to Folders.old
3. Open WLM
4. Access Contacts(Control Shift C) and delete all contacts(they still exist in your original wab file and the csv file made as
insurance)
5. Once you see the message that no contacts exist, close WLM
6. Open WLM and go to Contacts again and ensure that zero contacts are present and no migration is occurring, if so close WLM
7. Logon at contacts.live.com with the same Live ID used in WLM
8. Click Manage/Import then choose OE and use the browse option to navigate to the CSV file
9. If you have less than 1500 contacts(see first sentence above where it was suggested to reduce to less than 1500), then click
Import
10. Do not interrupt the process(walk away until through)
11. Once complete use the option to clean up duplicates
12. Logoff contacts.live.com and close IE
13. Open WLM and sign on with the same Live ID
14. WLM will start syncing and rebuild the local contacts database from the web server(do not interrupt)


Note: If you did use the OE wab file for contacts, you also must ensure that no commas exist in data fields in the OE address book.
The extra commas may present a problem exporting the address book to a csv file. Commas that I have seen create issues are those in
European street addresses and a contact's 'Notes' field.


--
...winston
ms-mvp mail