The Unexpected Ownership Change When Merging Duplicates

[TBjerkomp]

Dear Hubspot community,

We experienced today that when you merge duplicates (contacts or companies), the duplicate that you archive (the least prioritized duplicate) seems to overwrite the ownership (contact/company owner) of the chosen profile. 

In other words, the in-merged duplicate (which is an irrelevant registration) transfers ownership of the resulting profile. We think this is strange, and wonder if this is the expected behavior?

[TBjerkomp]

Hi @karstenkoehler,

Thanks for the quick reply. I think I get it now, so the last updated preference is prioritized when merging two contacts. I found and have voted for the wish/idea of the ability to pick which of the contact's preferences you want to choose at merging. I think that would be valuable. 

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @TBjerkomp,

This is just a coincidence. For the contact owner property, the most recent value is adopted by the primary contact.

If you're merging contact A into contact B – and contact B is the record to remain – then contact B will inherit the owner of contact A as long as that contact's owner was updated after contact B's owner.

If contact B's owner was last updated after contact A's owner, then contact B's owner will remain.

In your case it looks like the in-merged contact always carries over the contact owner but that's just a coincidence. When you tested this, the in-merged contact's owner was simply updated later.

It's hard to put this in short, concise sentences. Let me know if that makes sense!