Pipedrive’s Merge Duplicates feature flags possible duplicate people and organisations for review. Treat a suggestion as a question about identity, not proof that two records belong together. Decide what information should survive before considering a merge.
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Agree who owns the cleanup
Illustrative example: two sales colleagues have entered a contact after separate conversations with a potential customer. One record has a current phone number; the other contains an earlier note and a different job title. Ask the account owner to establish whether these are the same person before choosing which details to keep.
Create a small review queue rather than working through every suggestion at speed. Keep uncertain cases separate and record the question that needs answering. A shared company name or a familiar contact name may be useful context, but neither should replace checking the actual customer relationship.
Understand what the matching rules compare
For people, Pipedrive looks for the same name plus a matching phone number, email address or organisation. For organisations, it checks name and address. Two branches sharing a name can therefore be distinct records. Duplicate identification rules.
For the sales team, a contact who has changed employer needs particular care. Establish which organisation and conversation each record represents. Do not assume the newer record is more accurate in every field. Resolve the identity question with the person responsible for the relationship before deciding which values should take priority.
Open the review tool with suitable access
Go to Tools and apps → Merge Duplicates. Admins, and regular users with the required permission, can merge. Admins see all potential duplicates; regular users’ results depend on visibility permissions. Merge access and visibility.
Ask someone with the appropriate view of the customer history to review the candidate pair. A short duplicate list in one account is not proof that no other records exist. Keep the review focused on the intended contacts rather than widening permissions simply to make a number disappear.
Compare conflicting information deliberately
The merge screen shows context such as deals, activities, owners and creation dates. Choose the primary record: its information takes priority where values conflict. Use Preview to inspect the proposed result and Back to revise that choice before proceeding. Primary-record priority and preview.
Write down the fields that matter for this pair. For the example, compare the phone number, organisation, owner and job title against the agreed source of truth. Our Pipedrive custom fields guide covers defining structured information; cleaning duplicates should preserve those definitions rather than replacing them with guesses.
Treat the final merge as irreversible
Pipedrive says contacts merged through Merge Duplicates cannot be un-merged. If identity is uncertain, wait for confirmation. The detail view also offers a manual More → Merge route for records not flagged automatically; that route still needs a careful preview. Irreversibility and manual merging.
Before any live cleanup, preserve the information needed to investigate the decision through your approved backup or export process. Do not promise that an export automatically restores every relationship. Inspect one well-understood case first and record what was intentionally retained. There is no useful target for the number of merges if the identity checks are incomplete.
Prevent the next import from repeating the problem
Pipedrive’s import process offers duplicate recognition and merging or the option to create separate records. Imported deals with the same name are not detected as duplicates in the way contacts are. Plan contact and deal reconciliation separately. Import duplicate handling.
For the next file, inspect names, email addresses, phone numbers and organisations before importing a representative sample. Check both existing and newly created records afterwards. Keep an owner for the import mapping and the resulting review queue. If two colleagues need access to one contact, agree that ownership arrangement instead of deliberately creating competing copies.
Verify the result and the next action
After an approved merge, inspect the retained record and its relevant activity context. Confirm who owns the next customer conversation; our Pipedrive activities guide covers that follow-up. These are proposed review checks, not a reported cleanup of a real Pipedrive account. Keep uncertain candidates untouched until the relationship owner resolves them.
Sources reviewed 16 October 2026 against official vendor documentation. Examples and suggested rehearsal checks are illustrative, not reported product tests.
