I've spent a good chunk of this morning deduping my address book using the Plaxo Super de Duper tool. With 1300 duplicate entries it's a trying and frustrating experience. The Plaxo deDuper is great for small numbers of duplicates, but it's not so good when you have a pile of contacts that need editing.
It needs to:
1) Keep track of work done already, just in case the browser crashes. I just about threw the PC through the Window when IE 7 turned that faded "I'm busy" color after an hour of cranking away.
2) Allow me to simply select and move entries from one duplicate or the other to the final card. The tool isn't good enough at guessing the results, and it's not that easy to change those guesses. Drag and drop came to the web a long time ago. This is a perfect place to use it.
3) Ask for an update while I'm looking at the card in question. Often you will find that people have moved on, and the only valid email address you might have is a gmail address. You know they've moved… now you want to send email asking for an update. I had to resort to making a list as I was going through the dedupe process, and then go back and email people.
4) Give me the ability to delete an obviously dead contact, while in the dedupe tool. I don't want to have to take a second pass through my contacts to do this. See point 3) above.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
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Hi Alec,
Best solution here is to shell out some cash.
Mapilabs dedupe programs is the only way to go. Works better than anything else I've ever purchased.
They have two versions, 1 for contacts and 1 for deduping emails (which save a ton of time when you screw up up backup restore).
Cheers,
Dean Collins http://www.Cognation.net
Thanks for the tip, Dean. DeDupe is actually a premium Plaxo feature, which I've paid money for. Doh!
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