title: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 365: Millions of Contacts being generated for no apparent reason
body: <p>I wonder if the community out there can help with this.</p>
  
  <p>We are using Microsoft Dynamics 365 v8.2.2.112, on-premises (not cloud). </p>
  
  <p>The problem is this: millions – yes, literally millions – of Contacts are being created for no apparent reason.</p>
  
  <p>Our users access CRM via an intranet page, but also using the CRM Outlook Plugin.</p>
  
  <p>Since upgrading to v8.2 in January, something in CRM is creating millions of CRM Contacts. </p>
  
  <p>The same Contact is being repeatedly re-created hundreds and thousands of times for the same user. And this happens for multiple Contacts and for multiple users. The end result is that millions of Contacts are being generated. The contact gets created every 5 minutes (approx). </p>
  
  <p>You can easily see the Contacts being created. If you run an “Advanced Search” on Contact order by “created_on” descending order, you can see the same new Contact being generated every five minutes or so, and whose details exactly match the one created 5 minutes ago.</p>
  
  <p>We’ve got about 20 users who seem to be particularly prolific Contact creators. Possibly because of the nature of their role, they add lots (ie dozens) of Contacts to Outlook (but they definitely don’t add hundreds of thousands of the same person!)</p>
  
  <p>I'm absolutely baffled as to why this should happen. </p>
  
  <p>The prevailing view at my company is that CRM Outlook synchronisation is to blame. We use the Outlook plugin widely. We use version 8.2.3.8 of the Outlook CRM plugin. When users sync their Outlook Contacts, maybe it doesn't recognise that the Contact is already in CRM, so regenerates it? We think it's a bug of that nature.</p>
  
  <p>We can’t turn off Outlook synchronisation, because users require it in order to do their jobs. They need to be able to sync Activities, Emails, Contacts and so on.</p>
  
  <p>We've checked all our custom code (C# plugins) to ensure that no Contacts are being create anywhere. We've especially checked the "on create" of Contacts to ensure it’s not creating an additional Contact. No code generates Contacts. </p>
  
  <p>I understand that I am able to turn off users' Outlook Synchronisation filters. But I don’t want to do so as they do need to be able to sync with Outlook. It’s one of the reasons we use Dynamics CRM.</p>
  
  <p>Does anybody know what’s causing this? Has anybody come across this before? What’s the solution to stop this happening? I'm after a root-cause if possible!</p>