Prevent Duplicate Records

You can use the Prevent Duplicate Records option to block the import of records that appear to be duplicates. If you enable this option, the import of a record identified as a duplicate fails and you’ll see an error saying “Duplicate record was detected.” The rest of the records in your CSV will still go through.

For more details, see:

• Availability of the Prevent Duplicate Records Option

• Preventing Duplicate Imports vs. Manually Reviewing Duplicates

• Setting Criteria to Identify Duplicates

• Default Behavior of the Prevent Duplicate Records Option

• Cases In Which Duplicates Are Still Imported

Availability of the Prevent Duplicate Records Option

When the Prevent Duplicate Records option is available, you’ll find it under Advanced Options on page 2 of the Import Assistant.

You’ll only see this option if all of the following statements are true:

• The Duplicate Detection & Merge feature is enabled at Setup > Company > Enable Features.

• On the Set Up Duplicates Detection Feature page (Setup > Company > Duplicate Detection), you've selected at least one Detect (RecordType) Duplicates option. When you detect duplicates for any of the available record types, the Prevent Duplicate Records option is available for imports of that record type. Note that the feature is available for only four record types: Contact, Customer, Partner, and Vendor.

Preventing Duplicate Imports vs. Manually Reviewing Duplicates

When you enable the Prevent Duplicate Records option and try to import a record that appears to be a duplicate, the import of that record fails with an error reading “Duplicate record was detected.” If you leave the Prevent Duplicate Records box unchecked, the duplicate record is created and marked as a duplicate. You can manage the new record, along with other duplicates, on the Lists > Mass Updates > Entity Duplicate Resolution page.

For this reason, if you prefer for potential duplicates to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, you should not enable the Prevent Duplicate Records option. If the Duplicate Detection & Merge feature is enabled, records identified as duplicates are marked as such and flagged for manual review.

Setting Criteria to Identify Duplicates

To identify duplicates, the Import Assistant uses the criteria you set on the Setup > Company > Duplicate Detection page. For example, you might set that two contacts with the same phone number are probably duplicates.

Default Behavior of the Prevent Duplicate Records Option

By default, the Prevent Duplicate Records box isn't checked, and you can’t set a general preference for it. But you can create a saved import with this option enabled or disabled as needed.

Cases In Which Duplicates Are Still Imported

Even when you enable the Prevent Duplicate Records, sometimes a duplicate can still get imported if:

• Two users are importing records at the same time, and both are adding similar records.

• If multi-threading is used and two similar records are processed in different queues at about the same time.

General Notices