When you send an email, the same person can sometimes end up on your recipient list twice under different contact records, or two different people can share the same email address, for example a couple who use one shared inbox. Remove duplicate emails checks the email addresses on your list and sends only one copy to each address, so nobody gets the same message twice in the same inbox.
Role Permissions
- Contact people by email: needed to compose and send an email, including using the Remove duplicate emails option.
For an explanation of this and other role permissions, see People Permissions.
Step 1: Build your recipient list
Click or hover on Contact on the main menu on the left, then click Email, then New email. Under Include the following, choose how you want to find the people to include (an individual, a group, a filtered group, or a saved report) and add them to the list.
Step 2: Check Remove duplicate emails is on
Remove duplicate emails sits next to the Recipient List switch and is ticked by default. It removes duplicate addresses at send time regardless of whether you open the Recipient List preview, so you do not need to turn the preview on for deduplication to take effect. Turn on Recipient List if you want to see the effect on your list before you send. The details table then shows Duplicate in the Send column for any row that shares an exact email address with an earlier row, and the Duplicate of column names the contact record whose address will actually be used.
infoodle keeps the address on whichever contact record it processes first while building the list, which in practice is usually whichever record was added to your database first. There is no setting to choose which of two matching records is kept.
What happens if you turn it off
Untick Remove duplicate emails and every contact record on your list receives its own copy of the email, even if two records share the same address. The Duplicate of column still names the matching record for your information, but the Send column now shows Yes for both, and the Email addresses count below the table goes up to match.
This is different from One email per household, which combines household or organisation members onto a single row even when they each have their own, different email address. Remove duplicate emails only groups rows that share the exact same address. See One Email Per Household/Organisation.
Common questions
Does this remove anyone from my group, report, or list permanently?
No. Remove duplicate emails only changes how this one email is sent. It has no effect on the group, filtered group, or report you built the recipient list from, and no effect on any other email.
Two people share a family inbox on purpose. What happens if I leave this on?
They only receive one copy between them, addressed using whichever of the two contact records infoodle kept. If you need both names to appear in the message, consider addressing the household as a whole instead. See One Email Per Household/Organisation.
Does this apply to text messages, letters, or mailing labels?
Text messages check for duplicate phone numbers in a similar way, but there is no checkbox for it, it applies automatically. Letters and mailing labels do not check for duplicate addresses in this way.
What counts as a duplicate?
Two rows with the exact same email address, comparing case-insensitively. A shared surname, household, or address does not make two rows duplicates by itself, only a matching email address does.
Can I choose which of two matching contacts is kept?
No. There is no setting for this. If it matters which name and salutation infoodle uses, update the contact record you want kept so its details are correct before you send.
Next steps
Once your recipient list looks right, choose Basic, Designer, Mailchimp, or Template under Create from to start writing the email content.