23 February 2010 / LinkedIn 6 ReTweets

How Can I Merge Two LinkedIn Accounts into One?

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LinkedIn has been around for many years now, and maybe some of you created an account in the early days of 2004 like I did and just forgot about it, including the password. Then, later on you created a second account. Or maybe you used your business email as your primary email address and no longer work at that company. Either way, I am always hearing stories of people desperate to merge two LinkedIn accounts into one for various reasons, the most common being that they just can’t access one of their accounts anymore.

How can you merge two accounts linked to your name into one?

This is one bit of information that I did not include in my LinkedIn book, but they already answered this question back in 2007 in a blog post that they did on their top ten FAQ. It is interesting that three years later this still remains a popular question!

So, from the source, here is how you can merge two accounts into one:

“Unfortunately, we cannot merge two accounts but we’d recommend that you transfer all pertinent profile information to one account and close the other account. The easiest way for you to close an account is to email us. Please include the email addresses associated with each of the accounts and indicate the primary email address for the account you keep. Please note that you will lose all the information in the account you’re closing.”

In other words, you have to decide which of the two LinkedIn accounts that you want to keep as your main one going forward. If you forgot the password or changed the email address on one of the accounts and no longer have access to it, that is obviously the account that you want to delete. If you still have access to both accounts, it is probably in your best interests to keep the account with the most contacts and invite connections from the soon-to-be-deleted account into your main account.

Hope this answers this question once and for all! Anybody actually have any experience merging two LinkedIn Accounts into one? Please share how you did it!

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drbrucehoag

Given all the social networks out there, I would say that it's entirely possible to have two LinkedIn accounts and not know it. How could discover an old account long since forgotten?
shersteve

drbrucehoag, you can find if you have multiple profiles by searching on yourself. Those with common names like “John Smith” will have some sorting to go through but if you thought you had another profile at some time, a must thing to do. Someone could be trying to interact with that profile and getting frustrated with the lack of your response (simply because you did not know).
Anonymous

Neal, I worked with one person who actually had three accounts. Fortunately, two of them had very little info on them, We worked with one at a time to discover the password used for the account, get into the account, export the contacts, and then close the account from the user settings tab.

Once the two “old” accounts were closed, we used the exported contacts (fortunately not many) and sent an email (outside of LinkedIn) to them explaining what he had done. He then initiated connection requests to his contact listing and proceeded to accept them over the next couple of days on his good third account.

Oh, there were two recommendations (one each on the deleted accounts). He copied the info and sent a separate email to those individuals asking them to re-do the recommendation on his good account. Both individuals did re-do the recommendations for him!

Since then, his has continued to grow his profile and he has avoided creating another new account.

The only real difference with what you outlined (and LinkedIn confirmed), in this case, he had his passwords so he could get into the accounts and process the deletion himself. Getting the info out of the account before the deletion was key. It took a little time but worked out well in the end.
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PaulTran92

I wish I could merge all the contacts I've generated from 1 account to the other, as well as the recommendations I've received. I can simply ask my contacts to copy and paste the recommendations – but the contacts are the toughy!
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http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

Thanks for sharing this excellent information with us all. Yes, if you are able to get into the account that you want to delete, that is exactly the best way to do it because you can download the connections information and then upload it and send out new invitations from your “main” LinkedIn account. Cutting and pasting the Recommendations and then asking people to re-do them is an excellent idea. Thanks for sharing!
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Paul, as the earlier comment suggested, if you still have access to the “older” account, simply downloading the email addresses and resending out invitations will do the trick!
drbrucehoag

Dear shersteve,

Many thanks for your insightful comments. I will do as you suggested.

Cheers, Bruce
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http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

Thanks for sharing this excellent information with us all. Yes, if you are able to get into the account that you want to delete, that is exactly the best way to do it because you can download the connections information and then upload it and send out new invitations from your “main” LinkedIn account. Cutting and pasting the Recommendations and then asking people to re-do them is an excellent idea. Thanks for sharing!
http://windmillnetworking.com/ nealschaffer

Paul, as the earlier comment suggested, if you still have access to the “older” account, simply downloading the email addresses and resending out invitations will do the trick!
drbrucehoag

Dear shersteve,

Many thanks for your insightful comments. I will do as you suggested.

Cheers, Bruce
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