Just found an awesome tip via Lifehacker on the site tech-recipies. I had set up my mom’s computer to sync her phone and her Outlook and of course something went screwy and she ended up with duplicate contacts of every contact. This tip was a lifesaver as it allowed me to quickly and easily delete all of the duplicates while maintaining her original list!

Read the article for a more in depth approach including screenshots, but the basic steps are

  1. Switch to ‘Phone List’ view on the Contact screen
  2. Add the ‘Created’ column to the view and sort by it
  3. Delete all the contacts that were created on a later date

Of course it’s more sophisticated than that, but that’s the basic idea. Anyway, saved me a bunch of time.