Learn How to Remove Thunderbird Duplicate Contacts

Rollins Duke
Published: October 23rd, 2023 • 6 Min Read

This blog post explains the various ways to remove Thunderbird duplicate contacts. Nowadays millions of business and home users use Thunderbird to manage their email, contact, and calendar data. Thunderbird is an open source and freeware email client so this is the first choice for small businesses and non-profit organizations.

Thunderbird offers different types of address books to its customers such as All Address Books, Personal Address Books, Collected Address Books, Users Created Address Books, and Imported Address Books. But sometimes users see duplicate contacts clutter in Thunderbird, and they want to find and delete Thunderbird duplicate contacts from address books.

Let’s discuss one of the best techniques to remove Thunderbird duplicate contacts using software. After that, we will also discuss the manual ways to fix this issue so let’s continue reading this article.

Quick Steps to Delete Thunderbird Duplicate Contacts

Step 1: Export Thunderbird contacts to vCard.
Step 2: Use the tool to remove duplicate contacts.
Step 3: Import de-duplicated vCard to Thunderbird.
Step 4: Remove Thunderbird duplicate address book.

Anybody can easily remove duplicate Thunderbird contacts by completing the above-mentioned 4 simple steps. If you want to learn more about these steps, then continue to read these steps in detail.

Similar Solution: Tool to Remove Duplicate Emails in Thunderbird

Step 1: Export Thunderbird Contacts to vCard

Open the Thunderbird email client and choose Tools.
Thereafter, select Address Book from the dropdown.
Choose an address book that has clutter.
Right-click on the address book and select Export.
After that, select save as type vCard (*.vcf).
Browse the destination location and click Save.
Thunderbird to vCard export process completed, get resultant vCard.

Step 2: Use the Tool to Remove Duplicate Contacts

Download vCard Duplicate Remover Software that can erase duplicate contacts in Thunderbird exported vCard. This software provides multiple duplicate filters, you can enable required contact fields to find and remove Thunderbird duplicate contacts such as First Name, Last Name, Mobile Number, and Email Address.

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Launch the suggested software and choose the Select Files or Select Folders button to add Thunderbird address book.
Now select the required contacts from the software panel and click the Next button.
Set destination path to store resultant cutter-free address book contacts.
Enable All Fields from filters to find Thunderbird duplicate contacts.
Click the Extract button for de-duplicating Thunderbird contacts from the address book.

Step 3: Import De-duplicated vCard to Thunderbird

Go to Thunderbird address book and choose the Import button.
Choose the file format containing your address book data i.e. vCard file (.vcf, .vcard). Click Continue.
Select the de-duplicated vCard file and click the Open button.
Now select where to import the chosen data. Choose to Create a new directory called “Contacts”, and press Continue.
Hit the Start Import button to import the chosen data into the “Contacts” directory.
See import process is running, and a new address book called “Contacts” will be created.
Contacts successfully imported to Thunderbird client, choose Finish.
See a new address book is created under Thunderbird address books.

Step 4: Remove Thunderbird Duplicate Address Book

Now this is time to delete the Thunderbird address book which has duplicate contacts. Let’s see how to do this.

Go to Thunderbird address book and choose the old address book that had duplicate contacts.
Right-click on the address book and press the Delete button.
Are you sure want to delete the address book and all of its contacts? Choose Yes to confirm deletion.
Now see Thunderbird duplicate contacts deleted successfully.

Note That: After completing above mentioned 4 steps, you can easily delete Thunderbird duplicate contacts in batch. However, you will need to complete the import and export steps one by one. This is the professional and expert-recommended solution to resolve this issue.

Alternatives to Delete Thunderbird Duplicate Contacts

If you are looking for a manual method to de-duplicate Thunderbird contacts. Then don’t worry upcoming article describes two manual alternatives to remove duplicate contacts in Thunderbird. However, these methods come with some limitations. Let’s understand them with full details and basics.

#1 Thunderbird Duplicate Contacts Manager Add-Ons

Download and install the Thunderbird duplicate contacts manager add-on.
After that, restart your Thunderbird email client.
Go to Tools >> Address Book option.
Select an address book that has duplicate contacts.
Right-click on the address book and choose Find and manage duplicates.
Now you can see duplicate contacts, and delete or merge Thunderbird duplicate contacts.
Delete or merge duplicate contacts in Thunderbird one by one after analyzing information.

#2 Remove Duplicate Contacts in Thunderbird Manually

Firstly, open the Thunderbird address book.
After that, select an address book that has replication contacts.
Scroll down contacts and choose a replica contact.
Right-click on contact and choose the Delete button.
Are you sure you want to delete the contact, click Yes.
Delete duplicate contacts in Thunderbird one by one.

Add-ons and Manual Method Limitations

Thunderbird duplicate contacts manager add-on is available to work with Thunderbird 68.0 to 73.0 versions. But nowadays most of the users are using Thunderbird’s latest editions. Hence, this is not useful for the latest Thunderbird customers.
This is not advisable to downgrade the Thunderbird version because you may lose some features. Even Thunderbird can face compatibility issues or there is no support available for old editions.
The manual method allows to remove Thunderbird duplicate contacts one by one, so it seems time-consuming method. Hence, if you are deleting batch Thunderbird replica contacts then it will take a much longer time.
You need to find replication contacts in Thunderbird manually by name. But sometimes users store different contacts with the same name and you can mistakenly delete the wrong contact in Thunderbird address book.

Conclusion

The above article described various techniques to remove Thunderbird duplicate contacts. Being a tech expert, I would like to suggest you quick method to fix Thunderbird replication contacts. If you are a home user and want to erase Thunderbird duplicate contacts from the small address book, then you can use manual approaches.

Recommended: Expert Choice to Remove Duplicate Contacts in Outlook