Comments on: Eliminating duplicate contacts in Evolution (HowTo)

By: Brion Kidder

Brion Kidder — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:35:23 +0000

OIC. You have to add the command perl in front of the script. Did not know that.

brion@brion-laptop:~$ perl evo_eliminate_duplicate_contacts.pl

By: Brion Kidder

Brion Kidder — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:31:15 +0000

When I run the script from Terminal I get the error message “command not found”

evo_eliminate_duplicate_contacts.pl

By: Rohan Kapoor

Rohan Kapoor — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 05:39:01 +0000

Thanks a lot for this! You saved me around hours of work when synce messed up and I ended up with 8 of the same contact x 400 contacts!

By: Shane Rice

Shane Rice — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 02:03:03 +0000

Works great for me! I had a bunch of duplicates after syncing with Palm. This eliminated them. Thanks!!! 2000+ contacts down to 1000+ contacts!

By: Mike

Mike — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:31:14 +0000

There is an easier way! Create a new address book. Name it whatever you want. Take the two known* duplicate entries and drag them there. It will give you the duplicate merge dialog. Merge them. Drag them back. Done!

*this being the tricky part...

By: Edmond Tong

Edmond Tong — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 16:22:18 +0000

Wow you’ve saved me hours with that script!! Thanks a bunch!

By: Hitchhiker

Hitchhiker — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:06:24 +0000

Everyone: thanks for all the comments! I am happy that the script has been useful for some people.

@Addressed Out & Ismael: it’s a very dumb script, it simply keeps the first record for each person, and it does the checking based on the person’s name. So it will not merge duplicate records, and it will blindly remove everything beyond the first one it finds for each person. If the first record it finds is empty, that’s the one it’ll keep. Furthermore, there’s no way to know which record it will find first, given the nature of the database file in which the records are stored.

The script could be improved to do merging, or at least to check which record has more information before deleting them. Unfortunately I am not using Evolution any more, so that will have to be a task for someone else

By: Addressed Out

Addressed Out — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:25:05 +0000

Thanks a lot – your script worked well for me.

I just had a question –
your script just eliminates duplicates – but does it merge duplicate contacts? (e.g. if I’d added a work telephone No. to one entry and a Mob. No. to the other does this info get saved) – or does the script just delete the second version. Many thanks.

By: Ismael Olea

Ismael Olea — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:04:09 +0000

You're script is very nice, but it removes all contacts not only duplicates but complementary contacts for same persons in different roles.

Anyhow, it'll be really useful a cleaning tool for evo.

By: Ch0c0bn

Ch0c0bn — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 07:46:56 +0000

My adressbook had gone wild after using syncevolution with scheduleworld.

Your script worked really fine for me. thank you.