I recommend you sign out entirely on each and every device you have and also all services (facebook, skype, etc). You can see which devices are linked on your Microsoft.com account page. Phone, tablet, etc. Even Outlook apps on your PC and such. Sign out on 'em all. You can manage your contacts entirely via the link you provided (outlook web app) so try to isolate your Outlook from any and all sources.
If your phone is the problem as you said, I'd recommend resetting your phone to factory settings after a backup. Maybe the software got bugged out, by an update or something else.
I haven't had a self-replicating contacts problem before, but I did once have a huge number of facebook contacts locked to my MS account even though the two weren't linked. Which I solved by re-linking the two and then unlinking them again. Outlook contacts are notoriously buggy. Same for the calendar. Random no-name contacts popping up as a birthday, linked to no contacts. facepalm
As for deleting them all, 25.000 is obviously a lot, but I doubt an automated process exists if the cleanup doesn't work. You can at least press the checkmark at the top of each page to select them all and delete them. If push comes to shove that may be your only option.
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I only have the phone linked to my account, not even the pc or anything else on the pc (I also reinstalled Windows when I reset the phone and I created a local account instead of using MS account). My phone has Skype but that shouldn't interfere (it has its own contact list which is fine) but don't have anything like FB, Twitter and so on. MS account isn't linked to anything else.
The only way to completely unlink the phone is to reset it, but I can't and don't want to at the moment.
Now I found out in the Outlook contact list you can select all contacts (tick box was invisible) and you can press the 'delete' button. First time I saw it (some weeks ago) there was a 50 limit to selection, now instead you can select all contacts. I press 'delete' and after a while an error message pops out saying something like "you can't complete this action at this time", however it looks like some contacts are actually getting deleted. I was able to delete about 5000 contacts now, yay! Let's hope it can delete everything, including those broken contacts that keep replicating...
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Page sort of crashed while operating and now I can't access my account from my pc, wtf...
Edit: I can't access only Outlook
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Ok now I can access again but when I select all, the 'delete' button disappears. This things has serious problems.
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Yeah, it's ridiculous that Microsoft's support won't help you with this. But then the only thing their help.microsoft is good for is 1. Giving vague answers, and 2. marking non-solutions as solutions so that their account gets a little stat added to it. Sigh
I hope you manage to get them all deleted. I know it's dreadful to think about, as a last ditch option, but a new outlook account might be the only option in the end. You can export contacts from one Outlook account and import them again in the other - assuming you can isolate the "correct" ones.
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It looks like the contacts were deleted overnight. Probably the command 'delete' I gave several times worked although it required quite some time.
There were only some contacts left, which I managed to delete manually. Contacts have disappeared from my phone. Now I'll wait to see if contacts reappear out of nowhere or if the problem is solved.
Then I'll add my contacts back manually because I don't want to risk importing corrupted stuff.
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Oh it's just a Microsoft thing. I lost all hope a while ago.
I was a fan but now after the nth inexplicable bug I decided to move my business elsewhere. Got a paper agenda. No longer use Windows mail app, only outlook. Got another cloud. Got another phone. Got another browser. Etc.
Edit: phone was good but they gave up on Windows phone.
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Oh I don't use any app (Mail, People, OneDrive and all those apps) while on the pc, I only use them on the phone (because, you're like, forced to... but I'm fine with that).
On the pc I only use web versions of Outlook and OneDrive, that's why I don't understand where all this mess came from.
I like my phone but this shit and the fact that they gave up are really pissing me off.
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my Windows phone
hahahahahahaha
Wait. You're serious, aren't you?
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Yes, I am. When I bought it, I was upgrading from a Symbian phone, so Android or WP or iOS (out of budget of course) were the same to my eyes, but I've always liked the look of WP and, since in italy there were many at the time, I thought it was a widely used platform... I was wrong.
I still like it, I would like to love it, but if MS itself doesn't support it... why should developers?
Next one won't be WP for sure.
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Go to your phone settings and disable sync/contact sync from both there and the contacts apps.
Perhaps try to find an app that deletes the duplicates or something.
Try leaving your phone off or lowering the sync schedule and fix the 25000 you already have.
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Web Outlook managed to delete everything overnight and contacts disappeared from the phone, too. Now I hope they won't appear again out of nowhere, I'll keep it checked, then I'll add the numbers back manually.
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Hello forum lurkers.
Some months ago I reset my Windows Phone (worked well till then but needed a reset after two years). Two months ago I noticed malfunctions in my Contacts app (freezing while loading contacts list, didn't work even closing and reopening the app) but these occurred every now and then. However I took a quick look and it seemed that MS released a faulty update and was looking for a fix, so I didn't bother. However, these problems were getting worse, so I investigated a bit more. Turns out my contact list in outlook.com (here https://outlook.live.com/owa/?path=/people) had something like 25000 contacts.
Apparently they started replicating themselves for no reason and some of them also deleting themselves ending in my deleted email folder (and now my "trashbin's trashbin" is full of this junk and I can't even delete everything because there is no option to select all, great job MS). However on the phone I only see one contact for each (since they are the same, I guess it hides the duplicates). I exported the contact list from the site using the pc, then tried deleting all contacts from there. However, the site allows you to select only 50 contacts at a time, and very often when selecting more than one, the 'Delete' button magically disappears. I tried the 'clean contacts' thing but they are so many, the page used like 3-4GB of ram and eventually crashed (even if exported contact list is like 2MB). I tried with different browsers too with no results.
I tried removing synchronisation from all devices linked to the account and it seemed like it stopped (appearing in deleted email folder, don't know the replication itself), but synchronisation reappeared on the phone by itself and it started again. However, I don't think it's the phone's fault (it's all up to date and everything), but synchronisation's fault. Another thing I noticed was that the contacts that replicate are those I added after the first reset, so maybe I'll try resetting the phone when I'll have time and will. Anyway, even resetting it won't erase the contacts in the account and probably they'll keep replicating and filling my email trashbin.
I tried contacting MS on their forum https://answers.microsoft.com but all they told me was to use the 'clean contacts' thing or to manually delete all contacts (25 thousand, heh), or to get by.
Has anybody ever had a similar problem? I really don't want to change account and have to swap email address for every single service I use.
I'm sorry for the wall of text, thank you for your time.
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