"We have Calendar Duplication".
Below are all the links to all the best practices on avoiding duplication. The funny thing is, duplication is exactly what this program does, it duplicates items and ties them together based on a data relationship rule between folders. Some duplication is desired, and some duplication is not. Some is unavoidable and depending on how you look at it, actually beneficial based on the kind of relationships you build.
For example, with Calendar relationships, you can set up a situation where you will have duplicate items in your calendar because you have received a meeting request from the boss to three people, you being one of them. These meeting requests were common before Add2Exchange was installed and still may be used after A2E is in use. If you have private to private relationships to all those people, in what we call a “full mesh” or folder grouping – with everyone having a relationship to and from each other. When one person accepts, after the next A2E sync cycle, that accepted meeting will go to other users calendars. Tentatively accepted meetings will NOT copy. When the second person accepts, that meeting will be copied to the other users calendars. If all of them accept, then there will be four copies or what appear to be duplicates, each from one of the four invitees. We suggest using the "autoplace text" option of a calendar relationship to differentiate appointments from different users. Those who accept, will replicate, and it is a way for users who see the consolidated folder to determine who has accepted. This "acceptable duplication" can't be avoided.
After installing Add2Exchange many people just stop using the invite feature of Outlook and put the required people’s initials in the subject, because often there is no declining the meeting anyway. Doing this saves a step or two for each person, and when Add2Exchange replicates the appointment, it automatically puts the appointment on everyone’s calendar for them automatically.
A healthy tip here is to use the Auto Populate (Auto place) text feature in the Add2Exchange Relationship with the initials of the user so everyone knows where the item came from. With this feature activated, the subject of the calendar item is prepended (or appended) with a user’s initials so an appointment subject will automatically look like “BFB: Meeting in the Boardroom” and everyone knows it came from BFB, the big fat boss. This is also helpful in a private to public relationship and is most often used for Calendars and Tasks.
IF a user has a Contact relationship and manually copied all the contacts into their folder and then later we installed A2E or A2O and set up a relationship from where they copied them from, this will create duplication. The best trick here is to delete the relationship, select to remove destination items and then move the copies out of the destination and then remake the relationship.
Sometimes an admin will delete an alerted relationship, one which was broken as far as A2E was concerned and then remade the relationship. If that is the case, then you can license and use the A2EToolkit to pick that folder and remove the old and new copies. Remember, it is best not to delete an alerted relationship, but use the Recovery and Migration tool to assist with this. Buy NowTake care here, because if you remove copies made to a folder with an active relationship, and then specify in the tool to remove the correct copies in that destination, then the destination item deleted resolution will take place during the next sync. The safe setting for that relationship during that time is to Recopy. Incorrect settings are do nothing, mark item deleted, or heaven forbid, delete source. We also have an ToolKit which can do this and several other things. With per session support or if you are on Premier Support, we will do it for you. Buy Now
The resolution to "clean" any folder type of copies A2E made for A2E or A2O items is to download and license the Add2Outlook ToolKit or if you already have Add2Exchange, to license the A2E ToolKit.
Other valuable resources:
Calendar Tips: http://guides.diditbetter.com/a2e-guide/planning_calendar_relationships.htm
Avoiding unwanted duplication: http://guides.diditbetter.com/a2e-guide/avoiding_duplication.htm
With Contacts, it is best to deduplicate and prune folders prior to setting up an Add2Exchange relationship. Add2Exchange does not look at the name and address and see it is the same and then ties things together. If there is a Pizza Hut in both the source and destination contact folders before the Add2Exchange relationship is set up, there will be a duplicate in the destination folder, and perhaps the source folder if there is the reverse relationship set up. DO NOT TRY TO PRUNE CONTACTS and SANITIZE THEM with an Active Add2Exchange relationship! Often you won’t be able to tell which is the source and which is the destination and you could get unintended results. Do the consolidating and sanitizing first!