Duplicate LinkedIn profiles but only one of you?
I am often approached by people that have more than one LinkedIn profile; the current record with me is someone that had four! Most common is two. It is easily done, you created one year’s ago, forgot it, and then created another and possibly another …
It actually breaks the LinkedIn terms of service, so they could delete both (eek), and all those years of networking and collecting of contacts would be wasted!
But fear not it is easily solved. Simply search for yourself on LinkedIn and identify the profile you want to keep. You have three possible options:
Option one
You could ask LinkedIn if they can merge the contacts between the two accounts and then shut one down. Simply message them via contact us in the Help centre (this link takes you there) with the primary email addresses on each account (to prove they’re both yours!) and then tell them which you want to keep. Before taking this approach it is worth highlighting that they cannot move recommendations, groups etcetera at this time, just contacts.
Option two
Either Log in (if you know the email and password) or try to log into your secondary account by guessing what primary email address you may have used and the password. If you cannot recall the password and / or the email address then use the reset password option see here and then the Help Centre will resend the password to your chosen email address at that time.
Once you can access your account, add a secondary email (not the one from your primary LinkedIn account) and then you can export your connections (go to contacts menu and then you will find that option at the bottom of that screen) and then you have a safe copy of the list so that you know whom to invite into the correct account to avoid duplication.
Then shut your account using via Settings and account or use this link.
Option three
If your secondary account doesn’t have many connections and has no real value then you could just copy the public profile URL of the one you want to shut, then go to the contact us in the help centre (see this link) and ask them to shut it down for you.
Then hey presto just one of you, risk free, happy networking!
