I have read many posts and tried many approaches and find that there appears to be no practical way to remove unwanted contacts in the WLM contacts.edb file.  My "all contacts" list has grown to over 10,000 but has only about 1500 valid entries, the rest are duplicates and garbage.

I have exported contacts to a CSV then edited the CSV in Excel then attempted to import the reduced list back into WLM but it hangs after a random number of contacts have been imported and requires killing the task. I have tried this 20+ times with the same results.

I have tried to export contacts as CVF but WLM hangs during the export process.

I have looked into 3rd party software and can open and view contacts.edb but have not found an editing program.

I have tried using the "clean up contacts" option and which invariably, as seen in multiple attempts, hangs so that the internet program must be killed.

I have tried logging out of Microsoft accounts and that is useful because it allows me to avoid having to deal with all the bad contacts but since I cannot import good contacts into a new account (see above) that approach is useless.

I have tried logging in with different Microsoft accounts which allows me to deal with a reduced set of contacts but still no way to clean it up.

I am not going to uninstall and reinstall WLM or format the hard drive and do a clean install or some such because that is the nuclear option for a relatively simple problem that should be fixable. (Me: I need an oil change. Microsoft: Replace the engine!)

Ideally, I would like a program that allows me to have full access to the records in Contacts.edb so that I can sort, import, export, remove duplicates, etc. without limitation. Since contacts.edb is stored locally, there is no reason I should not have full and complete unfettered access. Since Excel is a great tool for finding duplicates and cleaning up garbage entries, a reliable way to export/import to create or rebuild Contacts.edb outside WLM would be ideal.

Any suggestions?