Help! I can't use my contacts app at all

Question

I'm not sure what's happened but over the course of the past couple of months my contacts list seems to have multiplied by itself and is now so big that I can't even use it. For each contact I have there seem to be between 10 - 60 (!!) duplicate entries. I've tried deleting them and they won't go away. I've tried linking them and unlinking them and they won't go away. The whole app is completely jammed up. It takes about 3 - 5 mins for the screen to load and even display the contacts and I can barely scroll through them.
My contacts are linked via outlook and I've tried managing them through that, but everything appears normal.
Basically, it's become impossible to use my phone as a phone without this facility. Can someone help, please?

Answer 1

So, you have multiple accounts?
If you remove the email accounts (or just the contact list sync) what is left on the device? You should only be left with Twitter, BBM, Facebook, etc. There may be "local" or "sim" contacts but there shouldn't be anything else. If any contacts listed under local or sim are in your Outlook.com/Hotmail contacts you can delete them from the device as they will sync back from the account. I don't keep anything in Local or Sim.
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