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Seeking Solution to Remove Duplicate Contacts Without Affecting Locally Saved Contacts

EP
Edgar Petrov
A&TA Montage GmbH

Hi,

After updating to a new version of MobiControl, we encountered an issue where a script inadvertently ran multiple times on our end-user devices. As a result, some devices now have over 200,000 contacts, with at least 8 duplicates for each entry.

Over time, users have also manually added local contacts, which are important for their work.

I have been using the following script:

import_contacts_vcf "/sdcard/download/All_Contacts_190324.vcf" 1 UTF-8
 

However, this script deletes all existing contacts before importing the original .vcf file, which results in the loss of locally saved contacts.

I’m looking for a solution that can identify and remove duplicate contacts without affecting the contacts that users have added manually. Ideally, this script would detect duplicates and merge them, preserving all unique user-added contacts.

Is there a solid solution available for this scenario? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

a year ago
Android Scripting
ANSWERS
RS
Rafael Schäfer
a year ago

There's no such solution in scripts.

You can use "0" instead of "1" to just add new contacts but this can create duplicates if the provided contacts already exists on the devices.

A possiblity to avoid everything like that is using contact syncronizing via a different app/account like Outlook with an Office365 account assigned syncing contacts (or just use a managed Google account on the device for that). Then you could provide such contacts to the accounts and they will be synced to the devices. (O365 and managed Google account are just an examples, there are for sure other possibilities like that as well)

So contact syncing somehow is the way to go in my opinion.
If others have any other (maybe better) idea, please add this here as well.

A
ATMOD@SOTI
a year ago

Hi Edgar,

Thanks for posting on SOTI Pulse and for requesting an answer.

Thanks Rafael for responding to the post, your expertise and willingness to help are greatly appreciated! Has your query been resolved? If this post did not assist you in resolving the issue, I believe a thorough investigation is necessary. It is highly recommended that you log a case so that we can delve deeper into the matter.  I would suggest you to contact SOTI Support (support@soti.net) to open a new case and one of our support engineer will be there to assist you.

Kind Regards,

Technical Support | SOTI Inc. |1.905.624.9828 | support@soti.net | www.soti.net |

SH
Sepp Hanso
a year ago

Hi, did you found a solution for this problem, we have the same situation and looking for a way to solve this problem.

thx

EP
Edgar Petrov
a year ago

Hi,

I’m still exploring possible solutions for the issue. So far, no direct solution has fully addressed our need to remove duplicates without affecting user-added contacts. One approach we're currently using involves a third-party app that deletes duplicates. However, it has a 40,000-contact limit and is slow, taking several hours to complete. While it works, it's not an ideal solution.

Still looking for a better option. If you find one, please share!

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