Google Contacts' Merge & fix vs ContactAttic
Before paying for anything, use the free tool you already have. Google Contacts has Merge & fix, iCloud's Contacts app on a Mac can look for duplicates, and most phones can merge within their own accounts. Here is what those do, and the situation they cannot help with.
What the built-in tools do
Open Google Contacts in a browser, click Merge & fix, and it lists pairs it believes are the same person, within that Google account, and merges them when you confirm. On a Mac, Contacts has Card → Look for Duplicates. Android and iPhone Contacts apps offer a merge or link for duplicates among the accounts on that phone. All of them are free, built in, and worth running first.
What they cannot see
- Other accounts. Merge & fix looks inside one Google account. The same person in your old work Outlook, in iCloud, and in the Google account you stopped using is three people as far as it is concerned.
- Files. The vCard an old phone exported, the CSV from a mail client you left, the address book on the backup drive: none of it is in any live account.
- Chains. The built-in tools match pairs. When one card has a mobile number, a second has that number and an email, and a third has the email and a new address, a pair matcher may merge two and leave the third. ContactAttic's matching is transitive, so all three become one person.
- Conservative matching. Built-in suggestions are deliberately cautious and leave the near-misses for you to find by hand.
What ContactAttic does
You export contacts from every place they live, which each of those services can do, and point ContactAttic at the files. It reads vCard and VCF 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 and CSV from Google Contacts and Outlook, works out which entries are the same person across all of them, and combines them keeping every number, email and address. The output is a standard contacts.vcf you import into whichever account you want to be the one, plus a report. It runs on your own computer and uploads nothing.
| Built-in Merge & fix | ContactAttic | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | One-time $59.99, free trial |
| Scope | One account, or one phone | Every export you give it |
| Merges across Google, iCloud, Outlook, old phones | No | Yes |
| Transitive matching (A=B, B=C, so A=C) | No | Yes |
| Keeps every field from every card | Mostly | Always |
| Writes straight into the live account | Yes | No, you import the .vcf |
| Report of what was merged | No | Yes |
| Privacy | Inside the provider you already use | Nothing leaves your computer |
The order to do it in
- Run Merge & fix (or the phone's merge) in each account. It is free and it reduces the noise.
- Export every account and every old file as vCard or CSV.
- Run ContactAttic across all of them, read the report, and import the single result into the account you intend to keep.
- Point your other devices at that account.
If all your contacts already live in one Google account, Merge & fix is the answer and it costs nothing. ContactAttic is for the day you realize they do not.
What about the price?
The built-in tools are free and you should use them. ContactAttic is a one-time $59.99 with a free trial that keeps up to 100 contacts and never expires. You are paying for the merge across everything, the transitive matching, and the report.
Questions people ask
Does Google Contacts merge duplicates automatically?
No. Merge & fix suggests pairs inside that one account and merges them when you confirm. It does not see other accounts or exported files.
How do I merge contacts from two different Google accounts?
Export both as CSV or vCard, run ContactAttic across the two files, and import the resulting contacts.vcf into the account you want to keep. Google's own tool cannot merge across accounts.
Will ContactAttic change my Google account?
No. It only reads the files you export and writes a new file. Nothing changes anywhere until you choose to import the result.
Try ContactAttic on your own files
The download is free and fully working; the trial keeps up to 100 items and never expires. A one-time $59.99 licence removes the limit, with all 1.x updates included. Windows 10 or later and Linux. Nothing is uploaded, ever.
Get it now