Merging duplicates
Find duplicate contacts, deals, and companies, merge them safely, and undo a merge if needed.
Duplicates are inevitable — the same person fills a form twice, or a lead arrives from two channels. Ikigai both prevents duplicates automatically and gives you a manual merge tool with a full preview and an undo.
Finding duplicates
- New leads are auto-deduplicated on arrival by email and phone, so most duplicates never get created.
- On a record card, the Possible duplicates block lists likely matches — the hint says it all: "drag one onto another to merge".
- Inside the merge dialog, candidates are suggested per type: "Similar contacts (shared identifier or company)", "Similar deals (same contact or company)", "Similar companies (same domain)". If nothing fits, use the search: "Search by number, name or email".
The merge preview
The dialog title matches the record type — Merge contacts, Merge deals, or Merge companies. Once you Pick a candidate, a preview shows two roles:
- Primary (survives) — the record that remains.
- Loser (disappears) — the duplicate that folds into it.
Use Swap primary and loser if the roles are the wrong way round. The preview then itemizes exactly what will happen: conflicting fields (primary wins), fields "auto-filled from loser" where the primary was empty, identical fields, custom fields, and the combined Contact details.
What survives a merge
The Moves to the survivor section lists everything transferred from the duplicate: emails, tasks, notes, timeline events, and payments. Nothing is thrown away — history is re-attached to the surviving record. Press Merge to commit; a toast confirms "Records merged".
| Data | After the merge |
|---|---|
| Filled fields on both | Primary's value wins; the duplicate's value is shown as "duplicate: {value}" in the preview. |
| Empty fields on primary | Auto-filled from the duplicate. |
| Emails, phones | Combined into the survivor's identifiers. |
| Emails, tasks, notes, timeline, payments | Moved to the survivor. |
Undoing a merge
The merged-away record stays openable as a read-only page with a banner — "Duplicate — contact was merged" — linking to the primary ("Open primary"); the banner's Undo merge button rolls the merge back. The survivor's Related tab ("Merged into this contact") offers the same rollback via its Undo button; the subtitle of the dialog reminds you: "Can be reverted from the «Related» tab". A toast confirms "Merge undone".
Tip: merge from the record you want to keep, and double-check the Primary (survives) chip before committing — swapping afterwards costs an undo.
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