You opened a contact and noticed the same value — say a first name — appears in two different fields. This usually happens when a contact existed before you renamed or restructured your fields, or when an import mapped the same source column to two destination fields. The good news: it’s a clean-up, not a bug.

Why it happens: Most often: an old import wrote «John» into both the legacy field name and the new field first_name. Both stayed because Mailpro never silently deletes data.

The 3 most common causes

1. Field rename without merge. You renamed a field in the field manager — the new label points to the same internal column, but the old field still exists with old data. 2. Duplicate import mapping. A CSV import mapped the same source column twice (e.g. column A → first_name AND column A → given_name). 3. Two fields with similar names. Your account has both name and first_name from different stages of evolution.

How to clean up

1. Open Lists → Field manager. Identify which field is the active one going forward. 2. Decide what to do with the duplicate: keep, archive or delete. Archiving hides the field from forms and the list view but preserves data. Deleting removes the field and its values from every contact — this is irreversible. 3. If you need the data merged, export the affected contacts to CSV, deduplicate the column in a spreadsheet, then re-import with «Update existing contacts». See edit contact field.

Important: Always export a backup before deleting a field that contains data. There is no undo. The export is in Lists → Contacts → Export → All fields.

Prevent it next time

1. Before any import, plan the field mapping on paper — one source column, one destination field. 2. After every import, spot-check 5 random contacts to verify nothing was duplicated. 3. Avoid renaming fields; create a new one and migrate data instead.

Keep your contact data clean

Mailpro’s contact fields are flexible enough to evolve with your business — and the column manager lets you hide outdated fields without losing the data. Read same name in different fields FAQ.

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