Lead List
How to use the Lead List: views, search, filters, columns, Apply to view on thousands of leads at once, Activity & Undo, adding and importing leads, and finding and merging duplicates.
On this page
The Lead List (the Leads tab) is where you find, sort and work with every lead you can see in the account. From this one page you can switch between saved views, search, build filters, choose your columns, and act on one lead or thousands at once with Apply to view: send email, apply workflows, assign users and types, update fields, clean up your data, export, archive and much more, with a preview before anything changes and an undo afterwards.
Want a quick walk-through instead? Click Help at the top right of the Lead List and choose Take the tour. It takes about a minute.
The first time you open the new Lead List, a welcome window sums up what it can do and the best way to use it, with buttons to Take the tour or Read the help guide. It only shows once; both are always under Help afterwards.
The page at a glance
From top to bottom, the page is made of these pieces:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Add Lead and Import | Add a single lead by hand, or bring in many leads from a spreadsheet (CSV) file. |
| View and Manage views | Pick which saved view you are looking at, and rename, reorder, share or delete your views. A view remembers its filters, columns and sort order. |
| Columns | The teal button on the right. Choose the columns, the date shown and how the list is sorted. |
| Search | Find leads by name, company, email, phone, address, custom fields or lead number. |
| Filters | Narrow the list to the leads that match your conditions. The line next to the button says which filters are on. |
| The bar above the list | What is narrowing the list (a search, for example, with an × to clear it), how many leads match, the page links, and on the right Apply to view (teal), Activity & Undo (pale yellow), Reload and Show. |
| The list | One row per lead. Click a name to open the lead; click a column header to sort; tick rows to work on just those leads. |
Views
A view is a saved way of looking at your leads: a set of filters, the columns you want to see, and the order they are sorted in. For example, you might keep one view for "Hot leads assigned to me", another for "Unread website leads" and another for "Everything added this month".
Switching views
Click the View box to open the views menu. Type in Find a view… to narrow a long list, then click a view to show it. The menu shows:
- All leads: every lead you are allowed to see, with no filters.
- My views: the views you have saved, with a short note of the filters each one uses (or "no filters").
- The account's default view, if your administrator has set one, marked with a people icon as the Account default.
If your administrator has locked the account default view, the views bar shows that view with a lock and the word Locked instead of the views menu. You work only in that view: you can't switch views or change its filters, columns or sort, and searches stay inside it (see The account default view below).
Saving what you see as a view
When you change filters, columns or the sort order and those changes are not part of a saved view yet, the views bar shows Unsaved with a Save view button. Click it, give the view a name and click Save. You can also open the views menu at any time and choose Save as new view to keep what you are looking at under a new name.
If you are looking at one of your own views, filter, column and sort changes save straight to that view.
Shared and default views stay the same for everyone
If you change the filters, columns or sort while looking at the account default view or a view someone else shared with you, your changes go into a view of your own. Nobody else's list changes. The views bar tells you when this will happen.
Managing views
Click Manage views, right next to the View box (the number on the button is how many views you have saved). A panel opens on the right listing each view with its columns, its filters and when it was last updated. Use Find a view… to narrow the list.
The buttons on each view, from left to right:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename (pencil) | Give the view a new name. |
| Duplicate | Make a copy of the view that you can change without touching the original. |
| Copy to other users (person) | Give other users in the account their own copy of the view. Pick the users from the list (type to find them) and click Copy view. Each user gets an independent copy; later changes to yours do not change theirs. |
| Delete (bin) | Deletes the view. This can't be undone. A view that a scheduled export uses can't be deleted until the export is deleted first; the panel tells you which export. |
To change the order your views appear in the views menu, drag a view by the handle on its left. The new order saves straight away.
The account default view (administrators)
At the top of Manage views, an administrator picks one of their views for the whole account under Account default view, chooses how it works, and clicks Save:
- Starting view: everyone starts on this view and can still switch to views of their own. Their changes go into a view of their own, so the default stays the same for everyone else.
- Locked: everyone except administrators sees only this view. They can't switch views or change its filters, columns or sort, and their searches stay inside it. Apply to view also works only on the leads in it. Use this to make sure each person only works the leads you choose.
- Choose No default to turn it off.
The default view shows a people icon and an Account default tag; a locked one shows a lock and a Locked tag. When the administrator who set it up changes the default view's filters, columns or sort, it changes for everyone. Other users never see this setting.
Searching
Type in the search box and the best matches appear underneath as you type. Click a match to open that lead, or press Enter (or click Search, or See all results) to show every match in the list.
What the search looks at
- Name, company, email and phone numbers.
- Address: street, city, state and zip.
- Custom fields.
- The lead number (for example 23569621).
- Comments, when Include comments is switched on.
How matching works
- Words match from the start of a word. shul finds "Shultz", and main finds "123 Main St", but ltz does not find "Shultz".
- Type several words to find leads that contain all of them, for example smith tampa.
- Put words in "quotes" to search for that exact phrase, for example "cemetery hill".
- Phone numbers match in any format: (555) 123-4567, 5551234567 and the last 7 or 4 digits all work.
- The matching part of each result is highlighted, so you can see why it matched.
Where to search
- In this view (the default) searches only the leads in the view you are looking at, with its filters.
- All my leads searches every lead you are allowed to see, ignoring the view's filters. If a search in a view finds nothing, try switching to All my leads.
- Include comments also searches the comments and notes on each lead.
When the account default view is locked, All my leads isn't offered and searches stay inside the view. The page remembers your choice of In this view / All my leads and Include comments. Tip: press the / key anywhere on the page (when you are not typing in a box) to jump straight to the search box.
After you search
The bar above the list shows a Search: … tag with what you searched for, next to the number of matches. Click the × on the tag to clear the search and go back to the whole view.
The first search after a while can take a few seconds while the search gets ready; the ones after it are quick. If it takes more than a moment, the screen says Hold tight, warming up the search so you know it is working.
Filters
Filters narrow the list to the leads you care about. Click Filters to open the filter panel. The line next to the button describes the filters that are on, or says "No filters. Showing all leads you can see."
Conditions and sets
Filters are built from conditions grouped into sets:
- A condition is one rule, such as "Type is Meta Ad Lead" or "Unread yes".
- A set is a group of conditions that must all be true. Use Add a condition to add more rules to a set and narrow it further.
- Add another set adds a second group. The list shows leads that fit either set, so each set widens the results. The sets are joined by OR.
Building a condition
- Choose what to filter by in Filter by…, then how to compare it (for example is or is not), then the value.
- Where there is a list of choices (types, users, sources and so on), tick more than one to match any of them. Type in Find… to narrow a long list.
- Remove a single condition with the bin on its right, or a whole set with Remove this set.
What you can filter by
| Group | Filters |
|---|---|
| Lead | Type, User (assigned users), Source, Status, Lead Grouping, Lead Activity (idle or not idle, based on recent activity), Unread, Has Attachment |
| Dates | Date Added, Date Modified (a date range, or within a number of days) |
| Fields | Field: any general or custom field, compared with the value you enter |
| Tasks | Has Active Tasks, Has Completed Tasks, Active Task, Completed Task |
| Opted-Out, Bounced, Campaign | |
| Lists | Saved list is / is not: the fixed lists you save from Apply to view (see Saved fixed lists below) |
Checking and applying
- The bottom of the panel shows how many leads match, and the filters in plain words, as you build them, before anything is applied.
- A condition that isn't finished yet (for example a value not chosen) is left out and the panel says so. Conditions with a problem are marked in red; fix them and apply again.
- Click Apply filters to show the results, or Cancel to close the panel without changing anything.
- Clear all removes every filter from the view.
Applied filters are saved with the view you are looking at, or with a view of your own if you were looking at the account default or a shared view (see Views above).
Columns and sorting
Every list shows the lead's name and one date. You can add up to five more columns after the name, and choose whether to show assigned users and types at the right-hand end.
Sorting
Click a column header to sort by it. Click the same header again to flip the order. Names and other columns start A to Z; dates start newest first. An arrow next to the header shows which column the list is sorted by.
The column menu
Point at a header and click the small arrow beside it to open its menu. From there you can sort A to Z or Z to A, Change field… (show a different field in that column), move the column left or right, add a column after it, remove it, or open Column settings….
Column settings
Click the teal Columns button at the top right of the page (or Column settings… in any header menu) to set everything in one place:
- Columns: the fields shown after the name, up to 5. Click Add column and pick a field (type to find it), use the pencil to change a column's field, the × to remove it, and drag to change the order.
- Date column: show the date each lead was added, or the date it was last modified.
- More columns: tick Show assigned users to add the assigned users column, and choose whether the Type column is hidden, shows the first type, or shows all of a lead's types.
- Sort: choose what the list is sorted by and the order.
Click Apply to save, or Cancel to leave things as they were. Like filters, column and sort changes are saved with your view; on a shared or default view they go into a view of your own.
Reading the list
- Click a lead's name to open the lead.
- Bold rows are leads you haven't read yet.
- The coloured box behind each row's tick box is the colour of the lead's first type, so you can spot types at a glance. Point at a shortened type (one ending in "…") to see all of the lead's types.
- Small icons at the start of a row mark leads that are grouped with other leads (click the icon to see the whole group), leads updated by a form, and leads that have archived duplicates.
- Click the Reload button (the circular arrow at the end, after Activity & Undo) to bring in new and changed leads. You stay on the same page of the list.
Apply to view: working with many leads at once
Apply to view runs an action on many leads at once: email them, assign them, change a field, add tasks, clean up their data, export them, archive them and more. Every action opens a panel where you set it up and see exactly what will change before you run it, and most actions can be undone afterwards.
Choosing which leads
- Nothing ticked: the action applies to every lead in the view, on every page, not just the ones on screen. The menu and the panel always say how many that is, for example "For all 1,932 leads in this view".
- Some rows ticked: tick the boxes on the right of the rows to act on just those leads.
- Tick the box in the header row to tick every lead on the page. The bar at the bottom then offers Select all … in this view to include the leads on the other pages too.
- To tick a range quickly, tick one box, hold Shift and tick another; every box in between is ticked too. You can also click and drag down the tick boxes.
The Apply to view menu
Click Apply to view above the list. The top of the menu says which leads the action will work on. Type in Search actions… to find an action by name (for example phone, assign or note), use the arrow keys and Enter, or just click one.
The actions you already know are at the top, in the same order as before. Everything new is underneath, under the green NEW label, grouped by what it does. You only see the actions your role allows.
The bar at the bottom when leads are ticked
As soon as you tick a lead, a bar appears at the bottom of the screen and stays there while you scroll. It shows how many leads are selected, offers Select all … in this view, and has one-click buttons for the actions people use most: Assign, Type, Status, Task, Email and Archive. Everything else is in the small Apply to view dropdown at the end of the bar, so the bar stays tidy. Click the × to clear the selection.
Setting up an action and checking the preview
Choosing an action opens a panel on the right:
- Applies to at the top repeats which leads it will work on.
- Fill in the settings: the field and value, the users, the task, and so on. Long lists (workflows, statuses, campaigns, users) have a Find… box above them: type a few letters to narrow the list.
- The Preview updates as you go. It says how many leads will change and how many are skipped (and why, for example "already have this type"), shows a few leads with their value now and after, and warns you about anything to know first. For very big lists the counts may say "about", because the preview counts as many leads as it can in a few seconds.
- The button at the bottom says exactly what will happen, for example Apply to 1,932 leads. Click it to run the action, or Cancel to close the panel with nothing changed.
When the action finishes, the panel says what was done and shows an Undo button. Actions that make a file (export, labels, PDF report, contact cards) show a download button instead.
Big jobs keep going on their own
Actions on more than 2,000 leads run in the background. The panel shows the progress; you can close it, keep working, or even leave the page, and the job carries on. Tick Email me when it's done in the panel to get an email when it finishes. While a job is running, the Activity & Undo button beside Apply to view shows a small orange badge with the number of jobs running. If the panel says Waiting for the background worker to pick it up, the job is queued and starts within a minute.
Views with more than 250,000 leads
One action can take up to 250,000 leads at a time. If nothing is ticked and the view has more than that, the panel splits it into parts, oldest leads first: for example Part 1 (1–250,000), Part 2 (250,001–500,000) and Part 3 (the rest). Part 1 is picked for you. When you click Apply, Part 1 starts and the parts after it are queued with the same settings. They run one after another, in order, on their own. The panel shows each part as it finishes, and finished parts are marked Done. You can close the panel at any time and the queued parts keep going. Activity & Undo lists each part separately, so you can undo or restore one part without touching the others. Each part keeps the leads it was given, so none are skipped or done twice, even when an action takes leads out of the view. To start from a later part, pick it before you click Apply. Exports, downloads and call lists are made one part at a time instead: when one finishes, click Set up part 2 to make the next one. When duplicates are merged in parts, the sets are found across the whole view, so a set whose leads fall in different parts is still merged into one lead.
Undo and restore
- Most actions can be undone for 24 hours, from the panel when the action finishes or from Activity & Undo. Undo puts back exactly what the action changed. If someone changed one of those leads again after the action, Undo leaves their newer change alone.
- Leads you archive or delete with Apply to view can be restored for 30 days, with their users, read status and campaigns as they were. Use Restore archived leads in the menu (it opens Activity & Undo showing just archives and deletes), then click Restore.
- To delete, you type the number of leads first, so nobody deletes thousands of leads by accident.
- Sending email, applying a workflow and making files can't be undone, and the panel says so before you start. A workflow you applied by mistake can be stopped with Stop workflows.
Activity & Undo
Activity & Undo is the pale yellow button with a clock, right after Apply to view. It is your history of everything run from Apply to view, and the place to undo it. Click it to open the Activity & Undo panel.
- Each entry shows what was run (for example "Change status to Hot" or "Add type: Website Lead"), who ran it, when, how many leads it covered and how many it changed.
- Its state: Waiting (queued), Running (with a progress bar), Done, Undoing, Undone or Stopped (with the reason; anything finished before it stopped is kept).
- Undo appears on an entry for 24 hours after it finished. Restore appears on archives and deletes for 30 days. Undoing a big job runs in the background too, and shows its own progress.
- Files from exports, labels, PDF reports and contact cards can be downloaded again from their entry with Open.
- Archived and deleted shows only archives and deletes, the quickest way to restore leads. Show everything goes back to the full list. Restore archived leads in the Apply to view menu opens the panel this way.
- Everyone's (administrators only) shows what everyone in the account has run, not just you, so you can see who changed what and undo it if needed.
- The badge on the button counts your jobs that are still running. Entries are kept for 90 days, and the panel shows the latest 60.
Everything in the Apply to view menu
The actions you already know, in the order they appear at the top of the menu:
| Action | What it does | Undo |
|---|---|---|
| Send a mass email | Write an email and send it to the leads (opens the email page, as before). | No |
| Clear email bounces | Let email go again to addresses that bounced before. | Yes |
| Apply a workflow | Start a workflow on the leads. Can skip leads that already had it. | No (use Stop workflows) |
| Remove pending tasks and emails | Clear the leads' unfinished tasks and the emails still waiting to be sent. | Yes |
| Add or remove form items | Put a form's fields on the leads (empty), or take them off. Existing values are not overwritten. | Yes |
| Add or remove types | Add types, take them off, or replace a lead's types. | Yes |
| Assign users | Add users, take them off, or replace who is assigned. Can email the users a summary of what they were given. | Yes |
| Change status | Move the leads to a status and set its criteria. If the status is set up to archive or delete leads, the preview warns you first. | Yes |
| Update opportunity | Set the opportunity line, stage or value. | Yes |
| Add a task | Add the same task to each lead, due when you say, for the users you choose. | Yes |
| Export | Download the leads as a spreadsheet (opens the export page, as before). | No |
| Mail merge (labels) | Print address labels (Avery 5160 or 5162). | No |
| PDF report | A printable list with the columns you see. | No |
| Mark read or unread | Change whether the leads show as read for you. | Yes |
| Copy or move to another account | Copy the leads into another account you have access to, or move them there. | No |
| Archive | Move the leads to the archive, out of the list. | Restore for 30 days |
| Delete | Delete the leads. You type the number of leads to confirm. | Restore for 30 days |
The NEW actions, underneath:
| Group | Action | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Communicate | Add to an email campaign | Send an existing campaign's email to these leads too (now, or when the campaign is scheduled). |
| Remove from an email campaign | Stop a campaign from emailing these leads. | |
| Add a note | Add the same note to each lead's history. | |
| Start a call list | Go through the leads one by one: call, write what happened, next (see below). | |
| Opt out of email | Stop all email to these addresses by adding them to the opt-out list. | |
| Opt back in to email | Take these addresses off the opt-out list. Only for people who asked to get your email again. | |
| Update | Set a field | Give one field (general or custom) the same value on every lead, or clear it. |
| Find and replace in a field | Swap text inside one field, like "Dallas Tx" to "Dallas, TX". | |
| Change source | Set where the leads came from. | |
| Assign & organize | Reassign from one user to another | Move everything one user has in the list to someone else, for example when a rep leaves. |
| Share out among users (round-robin) | Deal the leads out evenly, one user after another. | |
| Assign by state | Choose the states for each user; each user gets the leads in their states. | |
| Group as related | Link the leads together as one group. | |
| Remove from groups | Take the leads out of their groups. | |
| Save as a fixed list | Keep exactly these leads as a list you can filter by later (see below). | |
| Mark as duplicates | Mark the leads as copies of one of them (the one added first or last). | |
| Tasks & automation | Remind me to follow up | A follow-up task for you on each lead, with a reminder. |
| Complete or delete open tasks | Close out open tasks in one go, all of them or just ones with a certain name. | |
| Stop workflows | Cancel the emails (and tasks) workflows still have queued for these leads. | |
| Export & print | Download contact cards (vCard) | One .vcf file for your phone or address book. |
| Copy emails or phone numbers | Copy them to paste somewhere else, such as an email's BCC line. | |
| Clean up data | Fix name capitalization | "JOHN SMITH" and "john smith" become "John Smith". |
| Format phone numbers | Write US numbers one way, like (555) 123-4567. Extensions like "x204" are kept. | |
| Remove extra spaces | Trim spaces at the ends of every field and double spaces inside. | |
| Lowercase email addresses | "John.Smith@Gmail.COM" becomes "john.smith@gmail.com". | |
| Check email addresses | Find bad addresses and fix common typos like "gmial.com". Bad ones can go on a list to look at, be cleared, or be left alone. | |
| Fill city and state from ZIP | Look up US ZIP codes to fill in a missing city and state. | |
| Find and merge duplicates | Find leads with the same email, phone or name and merge each group into one lead. The kept lead's empty fields are filled from the others, and their history, tasks, types and users move over. If the leads in a set are not in a group yet, they become one: the kept lead is the primary and the archived leads are its secondaries. | |
| Archive & delete | Restore archived leads | Bring back leads archived or deleted with Apply to view in the last 30 days. |
Every new action except the call list, the downloads and copying emails can be undone for 24 hours.
Call list
Start a call list shows one lead at a time with their phone numbers (dial them from your own phone for now; calling straight from OpenLeads is coming soon). Write what happened, click Log call and next (or press Ctrl+Enter), and the next lead comes up. Leads without a phone number are skipped. A call list takes up to 1,000 leads at a time.
Saved fixed lists
A view always shows whichever leads match its filters today. A fixed list is different: it keeps exactly the leads you chose, for example everyone you met at a trade show. Tick the leads, choose Save as a fixed list, and save them to a new list or add them to one you already have. To see the list again, open Filters and use Saved list is …. Leads added to the account later don't join the list unless you add them. Delete lists you no longer need from the same panel.
Pages and how many leads to show
The same page links are above and below the list: how many leads are showing (for example "Showing 51–100 of 1,932 leads"), first, previous, page numbers, next and last. When there are many pages, type a page number into Go to page and press Enter. Use Show on the right to list 25, 50 or 100 leads per page.
The list remembers which page you were on, so after you open a lead, run an action or come back later, you are back where you left off. Changing how many leads show per page keeps the first lead you were looking at on screen.
Adding, importing and the buttons at the top
The row of buttons at the very top of the page is where leads come in and go out. A button with a small arrow beside it has more choices: click the button itself for the usual thing, or the arrow for the rest.
Add Lead
- Add Lead (the first button, in pale teal) opens the Add Lead window with one of your account's forms. Pick the form at the top; the window remembers the one you used last. Every field on the form is there, with required fields marked with a red star, and the form's workflow runs when you save, just as it does on your website. Forms set to Hide from lead add on the form's Settings tab are not offered here.
- Click Save and open to go straight to the new lead, or Save and add another to keep the window open for the next one. If a required field is empty, it is marked in red and nothing is saved until it is filled in.
- Paste contact details (in the window, or on the arrow next to Add Lead) fills the form for you. Paste an email signature or a business card and the name, company, job title, email, phone and address are put in the form's matching fields. Check them, then save.
- Quick add (on the arrow) is a short window for when you are on a call: first and last name, company, job title, email, phone, Type and who it is assigned to. Administrators can assign it to anyone; everyone else's new leads are assigned to themselves.
Import
- Import opens the importer: CSV, Excel and more, up to 700,000 rows at a time.
- Past imports (on the arrow) lists the latest imports: the file, when, who ran it and how many leads it brought in. Brought in the wrong file? Open the importer and click Undo next to it.
- Download a sample file gives you a CSV with a column for every field in your account, named so they match by themselves when you import it.
Duplicates
Duplicates finds leads that are probably the same person and merges them for you. The number on the button is how many of your leads share an email address with another lead. The next section explains it step by step.
Help, on the far right, starts the tour of this page or opens this guide.
Finding and merging duplicates
The same person often ends up in your account more than once: they fill in a form twice, come in from two lead sources, or are imported again. Duplicates, at the top of the Lead List, finds those copies and merges each set into one lead, without losing any history.
The number on the button
The number on the Duplicates button is how many of your leads share an email address with at least one other lead. Point at it to see how many sets that makes. It is worked out when the page loads and kept for 15 minutes, so it does not slow the list down. A grey 0 means no two leads share an email. A ? means the count could not be worked out just then; open Duplicates to check.
What counts as a duplicate
Click Duplicates to open the panel. The three tabs at the top look for three kinds of copies:
| Tab | Two leads are a match when |
|---|---|
| Same email | They have the same email address. Capital letters and spaces before or after it are ignored. |
| Same phone | They have the same main phone number. Only the digits are compared, so (555) 123-4567 and 555.123.4567 match, and a 1 in front of an 11-digit number is ignored. Numbers with fewer than 7 digits are skipped. |
| Same name and address | They have the same first name, last name and first line of the street address. Capital letters are ignored. Leads missing any of the three are skipped. |
Duplicates looks through every lead you can see: the whole account for administrators and users who can see all leads, and your own assigned leads for everyone else. Archived and deleted leads are left out, and so are leads already marked as a duplicate of another lead.
Reading the list
- The line at the top says how many sets were found, how many leads are in them, and when they were checked. The results are kept for 15 minutes; click Check again to look again straight away, for example after you have merged some.
- Each card is one set. Its heading is what the leads share (the email address, the phone number, or the name and address) and how many leads are in it.
- Under the heading are up to five of the leads, with the lead number, the email if it differs, the phone, the city and state, and the date each was added. Click a name to open that lead in a new tab. A set with more leads says and 3 more (or however many there are).
- The biggest 100 sets are shown. All of them are merged when you merge, not just the ones on screen.
- On a very big account the check can take a while. If it runs out of time, the panel says the account is too big to check right now; try again in a few minutes.
Merging every set at once
The Merge duplicates button sits at the top of the list of sets and again at the bottom. Next to it, Merge and delete does the same thing but deletes the copies instead of archiving them; you only see it if you are allowed to delete leads. You see the Merge buttons if you are allowed to update leads in bulk.
Merging works on the view you are on, the same way every Apply to view action does. To merge the copies across your whole account, switch to a view that shows all your leads (such as All leads) and untick any rows before you start. On a filtered view, only sets with at least two leads in that view are merged.
- Switch to the view you want to clean up and make sure no rows are ticked.
- Click Duplicates, pick the tab for the kind of match you want, and look through the sets.
- Click Merge duplicates (or Merge and delete). The panel closes and Find and merge duplicates opens, already set to the same kind of match as the tab you were on.
- Under Keep, choose which lead in each set stays: the lead added first (the usual choice, and the one picked for you), the lead added last, or the lead changed most recently.
- Under Then, check what happens to the others: merged and archived, merged and deleted, or just marked as duplicates (see below).
- Read the Preview. It says how many sets were found and how many leads will be merged, and shows a few examples, such as two leads being merged into a third.
- Click the button at the bottom to run it. A progress bar shows how it is going. You can close the panel; it keeps going, and Activity & Undo shows its progress. When it is done, it says how many leads were merged and how many sets were made into groups.
The match choices in Find and merge duplicates are Email address, Phone number, First and last name and street address (the same as the Same name and address tab), and First and last name (and company, when there is one), which you can only choose there.
What a merge does to each set
- One lead is kept, the one chosen under Keep. Nothing on it is overwritten.
- Its empty fields are filled in from the copies. If the kept lead has no phone number and a copy does, the kept lead gets it. When more than one copy has a value, the one changed most recently wins. This covers the standard fields and your custom fields.
- Types and users are combined. The kept lead gets every Type the copies had, and everyone assigned to a copy is assigned to the kept lead too.
- History, tasks and activity move over to the kept lead, so its history shows everything that happened to any of them. The kept lead is also added to any fixed lists the copies were on.
- The set is grouped. If none of the leads in the set are in a group yet, a group is made under Grouped Leads on the lead page. The kept lead is the primary, and the copies are its secondaries. If the kept lead is already in a group, the copies join that group. A copy that is already in a different group stays in that group.
- The copies are linked to the kept lead under Stored Duplicate Leads on its lead page, with the kept lead as their parent.
- The copies are archived (or deleted, with Merge and delete). Archived copies stay in their group, and you can restore them from Activity & Undo or the archive.
- Both sides get a note in their history saying which leads were merged into which.
Just marking them as duplicates
If you would rather look at each set yourself, choose Just mark them as duplicates under Then. Nothing is merged, archived or grouped: each copy is linked to the kept lead under Stored Duplicate Leads, and the marked copies no longer show in the Duplicates panel.
Merging just one set
- On the set's card, click Show in list. The list searches all your leads for what the set shares and shows the leads in it.
- Tick the leads you want to merge.
- Open Apply to view, choose Find and merge duplicates, and run it. Only the ticked leads are compared.
Undoing a merge
Every merge can be undone for 24 hours from Activity & Undo. Undo puts everything back: the filled-in fields, the history, tasks and activity, the Types and users, the groups, and the archived or deleted copies. Leads deleted with Merge and delete are erased for good after 30 days.
Very big accounts
- One run merges up to 20,000 sets. If there are more, run it again to merge the rest.
- A view of more than 250,000 leads is merged in parts that run one after another, oldest leads first. The sets are found across the whole view, so a set whose leads fall in different parts is still merged into one lead. Activity & Undo lists each part on its own.
- It is a good idea to merge duplicates now and then, and right after a big import.
Tips
- Can't find a lead? Switch the search to All my leads. The view's filters may be hiding it.
- Build the list first, then act. Filter down to exactly the leads you want, check the count at the top of the Apply to view menu, read the preview, then run the action.
- Made a mistake? Open Activity & Undo (the pale yellow button) and click Undo. You have 24 hours, or 30 days to restore archived and deleted leads.
- Administrators: use the Account default view in Manage views to give everyone the same starting list, or lock everyone to the leads you want them working.
- Tidy your data now and then: run Find and merge duplicates, Check email addresses and Format phone numbers on All leads.
- Save the lists you use every day as views so they are one click away, and keep one-off groups of leads as fixed lists.
- Share a view with your team using Copy to other users in Manage views, or ask an administrator to make it the account default.
- Press / to jump to the search box from anywhere on the page.