Hi,
When contacts are synchronized from Microsoft Dynamics CRM to your Outlook, the Outlook plugin creates matching contact records in your Outlook account. Problems start to occur if you re-install Outlook, or migrate to an Outlook installation on a new workstation. For most, that means every 2-5 years you’re exposing yourself to a potential duplicate headache!
Here’s where the duplicate contact records come from:
When the CRM for Outlook plugin synchronizes for the first time, it creates synced CRM contacts in Outlook
Outlook is installed on a new workstation or is uninstalled and re-installed on the same workstation
The new installation of Outlook sees the contact records, but does not know anything about the synchronization, so they turn into normal Outlook contact records
When the CRM for Outlook plugin synchronizes for the first time on the new installation, it creates new synced CRM contacts in Outlook.
CRM’s Duplicate Detection Rules only apply when synchronizing from Outlook to CRM and not from CRM to Outlook, so it assumes all the contacts are new
Now, Outlook has duplicate contact records for all originally synced CRM contacts: An Outlook copy and a CRM synced copy
To prevent In order to avoid creating duplicate contacts, a little advance planning is necessary. Before you upgrade workstations or uninstall Outlook, follow these steps in your original Outlook client:
Open the Personal Options settings screen for the CRM plugin
On the Synchronization tab, click Outlook Filters
Select all the filters, and click Deactivate
Synchronize with CRM, and all synchronized Outlook records will disappear
Set up your new Outlook installation, install the CRM plugin
Follow steps 1-4 again, but confirm the filters are Activated
Now, Outlook is synchronized with CRM with all your expected records, and there will not be duplicates
