Merging Contacts

[realizeit]

When I merge two contacts, it would be nice if the newly merged document included all the data of the two. I just did a merge and lost the phone number, job title, and all the other info that I'd spent much time collecting. A real PITA.

[RBozeman]

Hi @realizeit,

Data retention features when merging still need to be fully fleshed out. I've seen this on the HubSpot ideas forum several times. HubSpot keeps the most recent value across the duplicate record, except for a handful of fields where they have specific rules for how those fields are handled. There is no way to customize this as far as I know without custom coding a solution. It is also potentially possible through Ops Hub, but you'd have to build out your rules and code them into there as well. 

Also wanted to mention that Insycle could help with this. Full disclosure, I work for Insycle.

With Insycle, you can set rules for choosing the resulting post-merge master record, or even choose how to retain data in each and every field. You can set rules on the field-level. For example, you could instruct Insycle to combine and append all values held by the duplicate records for a custom multi-select picklist field, so that you don't lose selections when HubSpot chooses the data that has been most recently updated.

Here is a recent article we published on data retention when merging that you might find helpful. If you have any questions about it let me know.

Ryan

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @RBozeman,

Thank you for sharing this insight with @RBozeman! 

Best,

Kristen

[joseph_cone]

Adding my two cents here to keep this conversation alive... we have many contacts that we NEED to be able to manually pick which property should stay on the merged contact.  Most recent does not necessarily = most accurate.  Even a more basic CRM like Keap allows for this: 

Please HubSpot product team, make it so. 

[TiphaineCuisset]

Hi @joseph_cone 

Thank you for reaching out. 

This is not possible at this stage within HubSpot, I'd recommend upvoting this Idea in our Ideas Forum regarding this. You can also subscribe to the idea (Options > Subscribe) to get notified if the status changes. 

Thank you

Best

Tiphaine

[tankney]

Merging contacts is always a horrible task for me.  In a perfect world, I could merge through a screen that shows the properties for contact 1 on the left and contact 2 on the right and I can select which fields I would like to keep.  Keeping the most up to date field is not always the best or relevant information to keep.

[Rachel_KL]

I really need the ability to "pick and choose" which fields overwrite when merging.  Sometimes I want info from contact a and sometimes I want other info from contact b.  Merging them together should give me the ability to have the best of both worlds, or in this case, contacts.  I don't want the most recent.  I want what's accurate or what most accurately applies to a contact.

[Evans4316]

I totally agree on this one! Well said Rachel!

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@Rachel_KL wrote:

I really need the ability to "pick and choose" which fields overwrite when merging.  Sometimes I want info from contact a and sometimes I want other info from contact b.  Merging them together should give me the ability to have the best of both worlds, or in this case, contacts.  I don't want the most recent.  I want what's accurate or what most accurately applies to a contact.

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[deborahfelicio]

totally agreed! We have some serious issues with losing info as our check boxes gets replaced rather than merged or combined. Simpler CRMs (we came from Agile CRM) had  that option and it was great.

[Evans4316]

I so agree!! Drives me crazy~

[Phil_Vallender · Accepted solution]

Hi @realizeit

 The contact object in HubSpot only has one of each main property inside. So, when merging two contacts, losing some data is possible and is the intended behaviour of the app. 

For most contact properties, merging two contacts will result in the fields that have updated most recently being kept. Full details on the merge function are here: What happens when I merge two contacts?

Hope that helps.

[Gameblr-Vincent]

Some fields (including lists) are just overrided ; it is not the most recent one kept up.

For example, if I merge a contact being part of a list into a contact without list, the result will have no list.

That makes no sens !

Best would be, in case of conflict of unruled case, to ask to the client : pop-in with two tables, primary and secondary info ; keep or don't.

Best example is the conflict resolution of GIT, your developers must know about it 

[Evans4316]

I don't like the solution either....Especially if I want to designate one Contact as the primary and then merge the second Contact into it.  Right now...the Contact with the most current activity is designated as the Primary arbitrarily (or by Hubspot design).

At a minimum, it would be nice if it created a note or something.  I think more work is needed here. 

[realizeit]

But..I don't like the "intended behavior of the app." %-)