Merging Duplicate Contacts

Duplicate patient records happen to every practice. Whether a patient booked online under a slightly different name or a team member added someone who was already in the system, merging those duplicates keeps your contact list accurate and your conversations in one place.

Why Duplicates Show Up

A few common reasons a patient ends up with two records in Dental Marketing Tool:

• A patient filled out an online form with a nickname or maiden name while an older record uses their legal name.
• A staff member added a patient manually without noticing the person already existed.
• A contact was imported from a spreadsheet that overlapped with records already in the platform.
• A patient contacted the practice from a new phone number or email address, creating a fresh entry.

Before importing a large list, it is worth reviewing how to add and import patients to reduce duplicates at the source.

Finding Duplicate Records

Open the Contacts tab from the main menu. Use the search bar at the top to search by the patient's name, phone number, or email address. If two or more records appear for the same person, you are ready to merge them.

You can also use smart lists and filters to surface contacts that share the same email address or phone number, which makes it easier to spot duplicates across a large patient list.

How to Merge Two Contacts

1. Open the Contacts tab and locate one of the duplicate records. Click the patient's name to open their record.
2. In the top-right area of the contact record, click the Actions button (the three-dot menu or similar options button depending on your view).
3. Select Merge Contact from the dropdown.
4. A search panel will appear. Type the name, phone number, or email of the duplicate record and select the correct contact from the results.
5. Dental Marketing Tool will show you a side-by-side preview of both records, including the name, phone, email, address, and any custom fields on each. Review the values carefully.
6. For each field where the two records differ, choose which value you want to keep in the final merged record. Fields that match are kept automatically.
7. Click Merge to confirm. The platform will combine the two records, carry over all conversation history, tags, and notes from both, and remove the duplicate.

What Carries Over After a Merge

When two records merge, you do not lose information. Dental Marketing Tool combines the following from both records into the surviving contact:

• All conversation threads (texts, emails, calls)
• Appointment history
• Tags and custom field values (the value you selected during the review step wins when there is a conflict)
• Notes and internal comments
• Pipeline entries

After a merge, take a moment to review the final patient record to confirm everything looks right, especially custom field values and contact information.

Keeping Your List Clean Going Forward

A few habits that help prevent duplicate contacts from building up:

• Always search for a patient before adding them manually. A quick name or phone search takes seconds and saves cleanup later.
• When importing a list, map the phone number and email fields carefully so the platform can recognize existing records.
• Use tags consistently so staff can tell active patients from inactive ones without creating a second record.
• If you have a large batch of suspected duplicates to clean up, the bulk actions tools can help you manage contacts at scale.

Next Steps

Once your contact list is clean, it is a good time to make sure each patient record has the right information on it. See Understanding the Patient Record for a full walkthrough of what you can store and track for each patient. If you need to add or update several contacts at once, Bulk Actions on Contacts shows you how to make changes across many records without opening each one individually.