Removing duplicate contacts from Outlook 2011 for Mac is one of the biggest feature requests we receive. Scrubly currently only directly supports contacts cleanup for Mac Address Book, but you can easily clean your Outlook 2011 contacts by following the steps below.

With Microsoft’s August 2011 update, many of the bugs plaguing Outlook 2011 Sync Services have now been fixed and it is relatively easy to remove duplicate contacts from your Outlook 2011 address book using Scrubly. For more detail on how to set up syncing between Outlook 2011 and Mac Address Book read our blog post How to Sync Outlook 2011 for Mac with Mac Address Book.

If you have not yet installed the most recent Outlook 2011 update, do this first by downloading and installing Outlook 2011 version 14.1.0 SP1 or higher. For the latest Office 2011 for Mac updates go Microsoft Office Update: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads/. Before you install the Office for Mac 2011 14.1 update, make sure that your Mac is running a Mac OS X v10.5.8 or a later version.

How to clean up Mac Address Book contacts using Scrubly:

(1)     Sign up for an account at Scrubly

(2)     Download and install the Scrubly Mac client

(3)     Run Scrubly on your Mac and login using your username and password

(4)     Upload your Mac Address Book contacts to Scrubly for processing

(5)     Follow the steps to clean up your Address Book contacts

(6)     Download your newly cleaned contacts from Scrubly to Mac Address Book

Now, your Mac Address Book contacts are clean and duplicate free.

How to Sync contacts between Mac Address Book and Outlook 2011 for Mac

Now that your Address Book contacts are duplicate free, you now can sync these contacts with Outlook 2011. First make sure you have updated Outlook for Mac 2011 to the latest version 14.1.0 SP1 or higher.

(1)     On your Mac, open iSync and go to “Preferences”

(2) Check first option “Enable syncing on this computer”.

(3) Click “Reset sync history” button

(4) Open Outlook 2011

(5) Go to Outlook 2011 “Preferences”

(6) Click on “Sync Services”

(7) Check the Contacts option

(8) Select the Outlook folder from the list you want to sync

(9) Click on the “Show all” button

(10) If message is displayed “You have turned on sync services” then click “Ok”. Sync Services will begin syncing your Mac Address Book with Outlook 2011 Contacts. Note: the Outlook 2011 sync process can take up to 4-5 hours or more to complete depending upon the size of your contact list.

If Outlook 2011 Sync Services does not immediately start syncing

Many Scrubly users have found that syncing does not immediately start after turning on Sync Services. To trigger Outlook 2011 to start syncing, follow these steps:

(1)     Check the iSync option “Enable syncing on this computer”

(2)     Confirm that Sync Services is turned on for Outlook 2011

(3)     If all options are selected and above settings are correct then follow next step

(4)     Open your Mac Address Book and make a small change to any contact and save. You can also simply select copy and paste a contact into Address Book. Once the system recognizes the update, sync between Address Book and Outlook 2011 will start.

(5)     Important: We have found in testing that it is possible to trigger Outlook 2011 to start syncing twice and duplicating Address Book contacts in Outlook 2011 if two updates to Address Book are quickly created one after the other. Be sure to only trigger syncing once.

If Outlook 2011 Sync Services does not start syncing after Scrubly download

If Outlook 2011 Sync Services does not start syncing after Scrubly updates your Address Book contacts, you can trigger Outlook 2011 to start the sync process as described above. This process takes up to 4-5 hours depending upon the size of your address book.

To skip the long syncing process, another option is to first delete all contacts from Outlook 2011 so that a clean copy of your contacts from Address Book will move over to Outlook 2011 Contacts during the sync process. Since there will be no existing contact data inside Outlook 2011 to compare with the contacts coming over from Address Book, syncing will be relatively quick.

To delete your contacts from Outlook 2011 and then sync with Address Book, follow these steps:

(1)     Turn off Sync Services inside Outlook 2011

(2)     In iSync, un-check Enable Syncing On This Computer option

(3)     As a precaution, backup all Outlook 2011 contacts and all Mac Address Book contacts.

(4)     Delete all contacts from outlook 2011

(5)     Perform all 10 steps outlined above to starts sync process between Mac Address Book and Outlook 2011 for Mac.

You now have a clean set of contacts in both Mac Address Book and Outlook 2011.

If you are an Outlook user and you’re just diving into the world of Google Android, you may find that the way Google manages and thinks about Contacts is a little different than the way Microsoft thinks and manages Contacts. This post is an attempt to clear things up between the two worlds.

Google Contact Groups vs Outlook Contact Folders

The main difference between how Outlook and Google store contacts comes down to Folders and Groups. Outlook stores contacts inside individual Folders and each contact can be labeled with a Category. The Outlook Category you give a contact does not affect the Outlook Folder where the contact is stored. Whereas Google stores all contacts inside one big bucket called My Contacts and organizes contacts by Groups. What may look like folders inside Google Contacts are really only lists of Groups.  If you change or add a Group to a Google Contact, it will change the “folder” it appears in.

The default folder in Outlook is simply called Contacts. Think of each Outlook folder as a bucket. You can add as many Outlook folder buckets as you would like and each folder remains independent from the others you create. For example, let’s say you have two Outlook Contact Folders called Work and Friends. If you had a contact Bob Smith in your Work folder, you can copy the Bob Smith contact and paste it into the Friend folder. Now, you have two separate Bob Smith contacts in two separate folders. If you make a change to one Bob Smith contact, the other Bob Smith does not update with this change since Outlook sees it as a completely separate record.

The way Google handles this same situation is totally different. If you assign Bob Smith to both the Work and Friend groups, Bob Smith will now show up in the Work and Friend “folders” that appear in Google Contacts. Bob Smith is still just one contact not two. So, any change you make to Bob Smith Work will also change Bob Smith Friend.

Inside Google Contacts there are five default contact groups that you can’t delete, rename, or change. These Google contact groups can drive a lot of veteran Outlook users crazy. Here’s a further explanation of how each contact group works.

My Contacts: This is the default storage bin for contacts you actually care about. You can’t delete it, you can only manage the Groups inside. When organizing your Google Contacts My Contacts is where you want to focus your organizational energy as all Groups you create inside Google Contacts will show up under My Contacts. Most mobile devices will sync with this group.

Most Contacted: This group includes the 20 addresses you use most frequently. Gmail automatically updates this list for quick and easy reference.

Other Contacts includes any contacts that haven’t already been categorized into My Contacts or another contact group.

Custom Groups: You can create your own group, and thankfully Google will not automatically drop random people into it. If you have an Android phone, this is where Google Contacts really shines as these groups will show up inside Android Contacts and you can easily view Android Contacts by using these custom groups.

While the Your Friends, Family, and Coworkers group used to be a default group, they are no longer default. Note that if you previously used the Your Friends, Family, and Coworkers groups, then they can’t be deleted.

If you sync your contacts to an Android device, you’ll see a Starred in Android group. This contains the contacts you’ve starred as favorites on your device.

These instructions work only with the standard version of Gmail. If they don’t match what you see in your Contact Manager, we suggest that you upgrade to a fully supported browser or click standard version in your account.

Managing Android Contacts

This brings us to the way the Android Address Book manages contacts which can be troublesome for so many people. If you sync your Android contacts with Outlook or Gmail, Android keeps each contact list you sync as a separate Contact Type. So, if you sync your Android phone with Gmail and Outlook, you will see the native Android Phone contacts, Gmail Contacts and Outlook Exchange contacts lumped together in one list view. You might think Android would store Android contacts in the same way they store Gmail Contacts using Groups. But, in actuality Android keeps each address book separate based upon Contact Type and does not merge them together into one main All Contacts group. The All tab on the People screen combines all contacts into a single view. You can filter by Contact Type, but you sacrifice seeing all of your contacts in one location. To view only contacts of a particular type, press MENU > View > select Contact Type.

Android Phone vs Other Contact Types

Android stores contacts by Contact Type. Each new contact you add to Android will be stored in the default Contact Type you have selected. If the contacts you add to your Android phone are not showing up in Outlook after syncing, it could be that your default contact type is set to Phone or Gmail. To change the default Contact Type setting, follow the steps below.

Start Contacts and make sure the Contacts tab is selected.

Click Menu > More > Settings. Set “Save new contacts to” to one of the following options:

• Always ask
• Phone
• SIM
• Exchange
• Google

Depending upon the Android version you are running, changing the default Contact Type may require these steps:

• Start people and click add contact.
• A blank form will appear with save contacts set to Phone.
• Change save contacts to the default Contact Type you want.
• Save the above blank contact.
• After a reboot, the new default Contact Type will be updated.

Today we released a short video that walks you through the detailed steps Scrubly follows when cleaning up and removing duplicate contacts from Outlook. Scrubly works with Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 to search for duplicate and similarly matching contacts inside Outlook down to the folder level.

After the first five intense days after our launch, we’ve received incredible feedback from our user community. We want to say thank you for all your great comments, encouragement and in some cases new bug discovery.

Today we released an updated Scrubly Mac client that fixes the errors a few of our Mac users were running into. If you are a Mac user, you can launch the Scrubly Mac client and it will auto-update.

Here’s the major fixes:

• Corrected and updated text issues
• Fixed special character issues in address field
• Fixed operation timeout error while uploading contacts
• Performance optimization

After about 8 months of development and countless hours of feedback from our amazing beta testers for whom we are incredibly grateful, today we made Scrubly available to use in the open market. We’re super excited to get your feedback as we continue to improve the way Scrubly makes address book cleanup and removing duplicate contacts effortless.

Scrubly supports duplicate removal for Outlook for PC, Mac Address Book, Gmail and Google Apps Contacts. Give it a try, we’d love to hear how Scrubly works for you.

With the introduction of Outlook 2011 for Mac, many Mac users are asking the burning question around how to sync Outlook 2011 for Mac with the native Mac Address Book.

This is especially relevant as many users now sync their mobile phone contacts (Blackberry, Android, iPhone) with the native Address Book contacts manager. For example, RIM’s Desktop Manager for Mac syncs with iCal and the Address Book and relies on Sync Services to sync with Outlook 2011 contacts. If you will now be managing your contacts inside Outlook, you will need a way to sync these contacts back to the native Address Book.

This is also true if you are using Scrubly to clean up your Address Book contacts.  You will need to turn on Sync Services inside Outlook to sync your newly cleaned up contacts from Address Book to Outlook Contacts. Follow the steps below.

Before we begin, you should note that Outlook 2011 will sync contacts from Address Book, and you can sync e-mail accounts with Mail. However, Outlook 2011 won’t sync events or tasks from iCal (in part because Microsoft’s primary design goal with Outlook was to make it work with Exchange). Outlook 2011 also does not support CalDAV.

Setting up Sync Services for Mac:

1. Before turning on Sync Services inside Outlook 2011, be sure to turn off all other 3rd party sync services you may be running in the background. Once Outlook 2011 has completed its initial sync with Address Book, you may turn these services back on again.
2. As a precaution, make a backup of your Address Book contacts. File > Export > Address Book Archive. It’s important to make a backup of your data after you clean it up and before you sync. This way if there are problems you can erase and import the clean backup file.
3. In Outlook 2011, open Outlook Preferences by clicking Outlook > Preferences
4. Click Sync Services and select Turn on Sync Services for Contacts. Outlook 2011 does not yet support sync for iCal.
5. Select the accounts you would like to sync, (i.e. Address Book or MobileMe). Note that Outlook 2011 does not support MobileMe calendar or tasks sync at this time.

Troubleshooting Sync Services for Mac:

The above steps are really quite easy, however, many users have complained that syncing does not occur after following these steps. Here’s a few troubleshooting tips you can follow in the event this happens to you. Important: Be sure to back up your Address Book and Outlook Contacts before testing any of these Troubleshooting steps.

Turn on iSync

1. Launch iSync, located in the Applications > Utilities folder
2. Open preferences window in iSync Application Menu
3. Check “Enable syncing on this computer”. Sometimes this option seems to be disabled or you can’t check or uncheck this option after starting iSync. In this case, wait for iSync to complete the sync process and then the option will be available again.
4. Reset Sync History. Important: If you are using the new MobileMe Calendar, resetting sync data is not an appropriate troubleshooting step to solve calendar sync issues. Instead, please see Troubleshooting new MobileMe Calendar issues. If you’re not sure how to tell if you’re using the old or new MobileMe Calendar, see this article.

Delete Plist Files

1. Force quit all applications currently running.
2. Go > Home > Library > Preferences
3. Search for all files containing “com.microsoft.outlook.XXXXX.plist” drag these files to the Trash
4. Search for the file “com.microsoft.SyncServicesAgent.plist” and drag this file to the Trash
5. Start Outlook
6. Tools > Sync Services and confirm that “Turn on Sync Services for Contacts” is checked on

Close and Re-Start Sync Services Agent

1. Force Quit Outlook
2. Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor
3. Look for the Sync Services Agent under Process Name
4. Highlight this process and click Quit in the upper left
5. Close Activity Monitor
6. Re-Start Outlook

Additional Troubleshooting Tips for Office

http://www.officeformachelp.com/office/troubleshoot/

Additional detailed steps for issues syncing Contacts and Contact Groups in Address Book

1. Open Address Book.
2. Back up your contacts by choosing Export from the File menu and selecting Address Book Archive. Specify an export location and then click Save. The resulting archive file will contain a backup of all of your contacts information that you can restore later into Address Book (if necessary) by double-clicking it in the Finder.
3. Remove any duplicate or unnecessary blank entries by using Scrubly to delete duplicate contacts inside Mac Address Book.
4. From the Address Book menu, choose Preferences and click the vCard tab. Ensure the 3.0 option is selected for vCard Format and that both the “Export notes in vCards” and “Export photos in vCards” options are selected.
5. Create a new folder on the desktop. Select all of the contacts in the Name category in Address Book by choosing one of them and then choosing Select All from the Edit menu. Next, drag all these contacts into the new folder on the desktop by clicking and dragging one of the highlighted names; this will result in one vCard generated with all your contacts.
6. Open iSync, then choose iSync > Preference and deselect the option to “Enable Syncing on this computer.”
7. Delete all of the contacts and groups in Address Book. Quit Address Book.
8. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, open the Library folder, and then open the Application Support folder.
9. Locate the “Address Book” folder and move it to the Trash.
10. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, then open the Library folder.
11. Open the Preferences folder, in the Library folder.
12. Move the following files to the Trash: com.apple.AddressBook.plist and com.apple.AddressBook.abd
13. Choose Home from the Finder’s Go menu, then open the Library folder.
14. Drag the files located inside the “Caches” folder to the Trash (do not move the “Caches” folder itself, only its contents).
15. Choose Go To Folder from the Finder’s Go menu, then go to this location:
    /Library/Caches
16. Drag the files located inside the “Caches” folder to the Trash (do not move the “Caches” folder itself, only its contents).
17. Log out of your user account (choose Log Out from the Apple menu).
18. Log in to your user account.
19. Open iSync and then choose iSync > Preferences > Advanced > Reset Sync History. Then, select the option to “Enable Syncing on this Computer.”
20. Open Address Book. Drag the vCard from the folder you created on your desktop to the Address Book window to re-import them. To re-create contact groups, create the groups first in Address Book and then drag the appropriate vCards to each group.
21. Attempt to sync normally using iTunes for your iPhone, iPod, and iPod touch, or use iSync for other mobile devices.
22. If the contacts still do not sync, try starting your computer in Safe Mode by pressing and holding down the Shift key after hearing the chime on startup. It may take several minutes to start your computer in Safe Mode. After starting in Safe Mode, restart your computer and then attempt to sync normally.
23. If your contacts don’t sync, consider contacting AppleCare for support, or see this article for more information about removing the Sync Services folder. However, removing this folder is strongly discouraged, and should only be performed when the syncing Mac has been started in Safe Mode.
24. Once your contacts and groups sync correctly, create a new backup of your contacts, using the procedure outlined in step 1. This will preserve any of the changes you made that fixed your sync issue.

Your online address book shouldn’t be a dumping ground of everyone that you’ve ever met. Sure, you never know when you’re going to need to contact that person you met three years ago in the mall, you know, the one that worked for that company that you keep trying to sell to, or buy from, or work for. But will that person remember you if you haven’t contacted them since? If you feel that the person you just met might be worth keeping in touch with in the future, go ahead and enter all of their contact information into your address book as soon as possible after meeting. And, as a best practice, send them a short email or connect through Facebook or follow on Twitter to let them know that you appreciated connecting with them and look forward to staying in touch.  This way, the likelihood of them remembering you when you do reach out to them a year from now will go up exponentially.

Alternatively, if you really don’t think you have any interest in keeping in touch and if you wouldn’t take the time to write that contact info down in your physical, bound-paper address book, they definitely shouldn’t be in your online one.

When you go to add your contacts to an online service like Facebook, it helps if they’re organized and up-to-date. That person whom you met in the mall probably won’t “friend you” if they have no clue who you are, and the only people who’ll agree to your request are those you contact often, so you’d be better off cleaning out the list on a regular basis. But how to begin?

For starters, think of categories. Organizing your contacts is easy, since many web-based emails have sections for nicknames or category listings. The easiest groupings are those that you’ll remember: close friends and family. After that, you can group them according to contact type: type of business (media, accounting) or the name of the company that they work for.

As you go and add them to the categories, delete those that you either haven’t heard from or haven’t contacted in two years. Why two years? If you haven’t had to get a hold of them in that amount of time, then you never will.

The only exception here is family. Be sure to save them, since you never know when you might have to send that cute kitten forward to your second-cousin Martha.

OK, here’s where it all comes together – thanks to all of you.

After listening to all of your thoughtful feedback and smart ideas around
building an entirely new address book cleanup tool plus several months of
heads down focused development, today we’re ready to pull back the
curtain and give you a peek at what we’ve built.

We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback on Scrubly!

About 90 days ago, we sent out an email and video asking for our SyncAcross beta testers to provide candid feedback on the idea of BluCapp creating a standalone address book cleanup tool.

The response rate was incredible!  Thank you to the huge number of insiders that responded.

Below is a quick video that releases the results of the survey with some pretty surprising details.  It turns out that you and our insider group of SyncAcross beta users and friends are serious connectors! In the video I share the details on the type of platforms where the group manages contacts and a statistic on the iPhone that blew me away!