Can I merge duplicate contacts?
Yes. The CRM finds contacts that look like the same person entered twice, and a user with the right to delete can merge a pair into one record. The record you do not keep is archived rather than destroyed.
Open Contacts and choose the duplicates view. The CRM compares every contact with every other one and groups the pairs it finds by how sure it is: the same email address, or the same phone number and name, or a shared phone number alone — which can be two people in one household, so it is shown but never assumed.
Open both records before merging. A merge keeps one contact and moves everything attached to the other onto it — leads, notes, the activity trail, files and campaign history — and then archives the second record. The screen says so before you confirm: it will be archived, not deleted.
The merge itself still cannot be undone, and that is a different thing from the record being gone. The person is kept, and the archived record names the contact its history went to; what is not kept is which side each note, follow-up and file came from, so there is nothing to separate them back out with. Merge when you are sure the two rows are one person.
Because a merge archives a record, it needs the same permission as deleting one. On a team account that means a manager with the right to delete, or an admin; an agent can see the duplicates but not merge them. You can also mark a pair as not a duplicate so it stops being suggested — and a pair you have already merged does not come back as a suggestion.
See "What happens when I delete a contact, a lead or a colleague?" for what the archive is and how to get a record out of it.