> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.rescueconsole.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Duplicate people

> How RescueConsole spots people who may have been entered twice, and exactly what merging two of them does.

The same person often ends up on file twice: an adopter re-entered at intake, a donor who used a new email, an import that overlapped with what was already there. **Possible duplicates** lists the records that look like the same person, and lets you merge them.

To open it, press **Find duplicates** at the top of [the people list](/people/list). The page and the button need **Configure** on People.

## How duplicates are found

Two or more people are shown together as a group when they have:

| Shown as                    | What matched                                                                                                               |
| --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **matching email**          | The same email address, ignoring capital letters and spaces at either end.                                                 |
| **matching name and phone** | The same first name, the same last name (ignoring capital letters) and the same phone number. All three must be filled in. |

The email and phone compared are each person's main ones. People who are archived or deleted are not checked. Names are not compared on their own, and there is no near-match: "Jon" and "John" are not a match.

A person can appear in more than one group, once for their email and once for their name and phone. When nothing matches, the page says **No likely duplicates found**.

Each group lists its people by name, with their email (or **no email**). Click a name to open that record and check before you merge.

## Merging two people

Beside each person in a group is a button for every other person in it, reading **Keep this, merge** followed by the other person's name. The person on that row is the one you keep; the named person is merged into them. You are asked to confirm first.

<Warning>
  A merge cannot be undone.
</Warning>

### What moves to the person you keep

* their donations;
* the email they were sent or sent you, as recorded in the [communications log](/communications/log).

Nothing else moves.

### What does not move

The person you keep is not changed. Nothing is copied from the merged-in record onto them: not its email addresses or phone numbers, addresses, tags, notes, roles or custom fields.

Everything else stays with the merged-in record, including its foster home, affiliations, applications, adoptions, volunteer shift sign-ups, workflows and communication preferences. It can still be read on the archived record, below. Before you merge, compare the two records and add to the one you keep anything it is missing, such as a second phone number or a note.

### What happens to the other record

It is not deleted. Its status is set to **Archived**, so it leaves the duplicates page, and it keeps everything that did not move. You can still find it in the people list by filtering on **Status** archived.

<Note>
  Merging does not touch sign-ins. If the merged-in person can sign in to RescueConsole, they still can: remove their access under **Settings → Team & volunteers → Team members** if they should not.
</Note>