One person, two email addresses: merging work and personal emails in Attio

Last checked November 3, 2026 · Deduptio is our product. Every claim about another tool comes from its public site or documentation and is linked in place — tell us if something is out of date.

This page is about the pair you already have and the record you want to end up with. Why email sync creates these pairs in the first place, and the settings that reduce it, are covered in duplicates from Attio email sync.

Why you cannot just add the second address

The Email addresses attribute on a person is multi-value. One record can hold a work address, a personal address, an old address from a previous job and an alias, and Attio attaches mail from any of them to that one record.

The same attribute is unique across people. Attio uses it to spot duplicates: it prompts you when a new or imported person has an address that is already on file. The API is stricter: creating a person with an address another record holds is rejected. So if a second Jane record already holds jane.doe@gmail.com, that address is taken. You either remove it from the second record, which throws away the reason it exists, or you merge the two records into one.

Merging is almost always right. The second record usually carries something worth keeping: the email thread from the personal address, a form submission, a note a colleague left. Deleting it loses that history. Merging keeps it.

Before you merge: is it really one person?

A matching name next to a different address is a candidate, not a proof. Check at least one more signal before merging, because Attio documents no way to undo a merge.

• Same LinkedIn URL or mobile number on both records: one person.
• The thread itself.Open the email on the personal-address record. If Jane writes “sending this from my personal account” or signs with her Acme title, that settles it.
• Same local part, such as jane.doe@ on both domains: likely one person, still worth a look.

Three cases look like a work and personal pair and are not:

• An assistantwho books meetings for an executive from their own address, under the executive's name in the calendar invite.
• A family member sharing a surname and a household address.
• A shared inbox such as info@ or founders@, which is a role, not a person. Leave it as its own record or suppress it.

The full signal ranking is in finding duplicate people in Attio.

Merging the two records

You need write access to the People object. Read-only members cannot merge.

1. Open one of the two person records.
2. Click the ⋮ icon in the top right corner of the record page and choose Merge records.
3. Click + and search for the other record. Searching by the other email address is the fastest way to land on the right one.
4. Put the record whose field values you trust on the right. Where both records hold a value for the same attribute, the right-hand value wins. Use the arrows between the two records to swap them.
5. Click Merge records. Attio creates a new record from the two, with a new record ID, and moves list entries, notes, tasks, comments, files, call recordings and meetings onto it. Emails from both records are merged as well.

Which record goes on the right is usually the work-address one: it tends to hold the owner, the job title, the deal links and the lists. The personal-address record often holds only a thread and a name. If it has something the work record lacks, such as a mobile number, note it before you merge. The general rules for this choice are in how to merge records in Attio.

Steps per Attio's merge and delete records article, checked November 3, 2026.

After the merge: check the address list

Attio's documentation says emails are merged when two people are merged. It does not spell out how the Email addresses attribute itself is combined. So open the merged record and look under Record Details → Email addresses. Both addresses should be there. If one is missing, add it now. Attio accepts it this time, because the record that held it no longer exists.

This check is what stops the pair coming back. Attio matches people by address: mail from jane.doe@gmail.com attaches to whichever record holds that address. If no record holds it, the next email or form submission from it can create a third Jane.

Which address goes first, and why it matters

The first address in the list is the primary. To change it, click into Email addresses and drag an address to the top using the ::: handle next to it. The order controls three things.

• Sending. When you email the person from Attio, the primary address is selected by default.
• The company link.Attio sets a person's company from the domain of the first listed address. It skips public domains such as gmail.com and moves to the next address. If every address is on a public domain, Attio creates no company for that person.
• Enrichment.Attio reads all of a person's addresses, but where two of them supply the same attribute, the value from the primary address wins.

Because public domains are skipped for the company link, putting a Gmail address first does not unlink Jane from Acme. It does mean your team's replies from Attio go to her Gmail by default. Decide on purpose:

Keep the old addresses on the record even when they no longer work. They are what attaches old threads to the person, and what makes the next import or sync recognise them.

Integrations that write people: keep both addresses

A form tool, enrichment tool or script that writes people through the API should use Attio's upsert endpoint with email_addresses as the matching attribute, not the plain create endpoint. Two documented behaviours make that safe for a merged record:

• When the matching attribute is multi-value, as email addresses is, an upsert adds new values and does not delete existing ones. Writing Jane's work address does not strip her personal one.
• If the addresses in one request match more than one record, Attio rejects the request instead of picking one. An unmerged pair shows up as an error in the integration's logs rather than as a silent overwrite.

The plain create endpoint fails on any address that is already on file. An integration that only creates people will error on Jane once her personal address is on the merged record, which is the right outcome. More on what the API gives you for duplicates is in Attio duplicate detection with the API.

Will Attio find these pairs for you?

Partly. Attio prompts you to merge people it detects as duplicates by email address, and by definition a work and personal pair does not share one. Attio's help centre also says that after mailbox sync it may merge two people who share no address but enrich to what appears to be the same person. That covers some pairs, not all, and you cannot see which ones it skipped.

For a workspace with more than a handful of pairs, you need a rule that compares names and treats every address on a record as a key. That is what Deduptio does: a match rule checks every value of a multi-value attribute, not just the first address, so a duplicate filed under someone's second address still matches. Email on its own finds almost nothing in Attio, because no two people can hold the same address; key on the name as well. Merges run through Attio's native merge, so emails, notes, tasks and list memberships move to the merged record. When you pick an email from the losing record in the review screen, it is added to the survivor's list, not swapped in for it.

The limits, stated plainly. The Free plan matches names exactly, allows 25 merges a month and scans the first 10,000 records of each object; fuzzy name matching (“Jane Doe” and “Jane E. Doe”) is on Pro at $39 a month. Rollback is open for 24 hours, but rolling back a native merge re-creates the two records with their field values only: the emails, notes, tasks and list memberships stay with the merged record, which the rollback deletes. Review each group before confirming. Details are in match rules, rollback and plans.

Checklist for one pair

1. Confirm it is one person with a second signal: LinkedIn, phone, or the thread.
2. Merge, with the work-address record on the right.
3. Check that both addresses are under Email addresses; add any that is missing.
4. Drag the address replies should go to into first place.
5. Check that the Company field points at the employer you expect.

Related

• Duplicates from Attio email sync — the record-creation settings that produce most of these pairs.
• Duplicates from form submissions — where the personal address usually comes from.
• Finding duplicate people in Attio · How to merge records in Attio · The full guide