Create, add existing, and deactivate contact addresses

You may want to maintain the contact address information for a contact; for example, the mailing address or the home address of the contact.

You can either directly create a contact address for a contact, or add an existing reference address (including external addresses) as the contact address.

Your administrator can define contact address identifier fields. Civic Platform regards a contact address as duplicate if the address has duplicate identifier field values as an existing active contact address in the same contact, and forbids you from adding it to the contact.

When Civic Platform synchronizes a record contact with a reference contact, but the record contact has a duplicate contact address, the contact address in the reference contact directly replaces the contact address in the record contact.
When you add a duplicate contact address to replace the one that you are deactivating, the existing active contact address, instead of the one you are adding, replaces the one that you want to deactivate.
In previous versions, you may have added duplicate contact addresses. Civic Platform automatically filters duplicate contact addresses when you look up and select contact addresses to add in records.

Create a contact address for a contact

Depending on the configuration by your agency administrators, you can create contact addresses for a contact with different address types, such as home address, mail address, physical address.

To add a new contact address to a contact

On the Contacts page, find and open the desired contact.
Select the Contact address tab.
Select New.
If needed, check to see whether validation is required for your new address. Otherwise, skip to the next step.
1. Check whether the Validate button displays in the Contact address tab.
  
  Note: Even if this button is available, your agency may require you to validate only certain types of contact addresses against an external address source.
2. Specify the address type and country/region of the address, and then select Validate.
  
  One of three messages displays:
  
  “Address validation is required” means that the address requires validation.
  
  “No validation data source is defined” means that you are creating an address that requires no validation.
  
  “Failed to connect to the validation data source” means that the address requires validation but Civic Platform cannot connect to the validation source.
Complete the remaining fields as needed. See Contacts details for field definitions.
If the address you are adding requires validation, do the following:
1. Select Validate.
2. If you use to add an address from the list, select that address and select Select.
3. If you do not want to accept any of the validated addresses as correct, select Cancel.
Select Submit.

Add an existing address as a contact address

Your agency administrator may allow you to add an existing reference address (including external address) as the contact address for a contact.

Note: Changes you make in contact addresses do not update reference addresses.

To add an existing address as contact address

On the Contacts page, find and open the desired contact.
Select the Contact address tab.
Select Look up.
Enter search criteria in the address fields, then select Submit.
Select the addresses that you want to add, and select Select.
Select the Contact address ID link for your newly-added address.
Complete the required fields and others as needed (see Contacts details).
Select Save.
Repeat the process for each contact address you want to update.

Deactivate a contact address

You cannot delete contact addresses. However, if a contact address becomes obsolete, you can change its status to inactive.

To deactivate a contact address

On the Contacts page, find and open the desired contact.
Select the Contact address tab.
Select the contact address you want to deactivate.
Select Deactivate.

Note: If the contact address you want to deactivate is the primary contact address in one or more records, you must define a new contact address and specify the end date for the selected address.
Enter the end date to deactivate the selected contact address.
If required, complete the form to define a new contact address to replace the deactivated primary address. For information on defining a new contact address, see Create a contact address for a contact.
Select Submit.

Note: Civic Platform deactivates the selected contact address. If you define a new contact address, Civic Platform adds the new contact address to the current contact and the record contact(s) which used the selected contact address as primary.