How to edit many contacts at once in Clio Manage

The short answer

For standard fields, Clio Manage edits contacts one at a time. Clio's article Edit and Delete Contacts says so directly: you click Contacts, then Edit beside the name, make your changes and click Save contact. The bulk tools the help centre describes cover other jobs: filtering and exporting, applying tags, loading custom field values from a file, and deleting. A QuickBooks Online note applies: if your firm uses it and contact information returns after you save, Clio says to remove it in QuickBooks Online first.

What Clio does in bulk

• Find and export. Filter and Export Contacts lets you filter by keyword, contact type, tag or custom field and export the list as CSV. Do this first: the file is your backup and your list of what to fix.
• Apply tags. Get Started With Contacts documents applying tags in bulk from the contacts table. Go to Contacts, choose All, People or Companies, and use filters to narrow the list. For bulk tagging, use this native Clio option; no separate paid app is needed.
• Custom field values. Import Contact Custom Fields With Migration Templates describes a CSV template for existing contacts. The contact's first and last name, or company name, must match exactly, and the column headers must match the custom field names. On the Imports page you choose Add and then Notes from CSV, even though the file holds custom fields, and the Successes count stays at 0 by design.
• Deleting. Administrators can delete several contacts from the contacts table, and the bulk operations page offers Remove Duplicate Contacts for identical duplicates. Clio says contacts removed with the bulk operations tool are not kept in the Recovery Bin.

Tags are described in Contact and Matter Tags as something you apply while editing a contact, up to 50 per contact. That article covers individual editing; the contacts table's bulk tagging capability is documented separately in Get Started With Contacts above.

Where the native tools stop

• Titles, names, email addresses and other standard fields have no bulk edit in the articles we read. A new email domain means opening every contact.
• The contacts migration template is described as importing person and company contacts. The article does not describe using it to update contacts that already exist, so do not rely on it for corrections.
• A custom field import needs careful preparation: special characters in field names will not import, and fields set to Default or Required must be adjusted first.

For a few dozen contacts, editing by hand is reasonable. Export the filtered list first, and write down what you changed. If duplicates are part of the problem, merge them before editing; see how to find and merge duplicate contacts in Clio Manage.

Option: Tidyroll

Disclosure. Atesen Software, which publishes this guide, makes Tidyroll. The Clio steps above work without it.

Tidyroll is a web app for law firms on Clio Manage. You connect through Clio's own sign-in. It offers bulk contact edits with a preview and undo. Before choosing it for a particular correction, check which fields and operations the current app supports.

• Preview, confirmation, undo. You read a preview of every change, type a confirmation, and can undo the run for 30 days. Changes are journaled and read back from Clio.
• Edited in Clio meanwhile. It uses Clio's ETags, so a record someone edited in Clio in the meantime is not overwritten.

Good to know. Tidyroll works only with Clio Manage accounts in Clio's US region (app.clio.com) today; the Canada, Europe / UK and Australia regions are not open yet. It needs a Clio Manage plan that includes apps and integrations (API access). It is not in the Clio App Directory, and Clio has not reviewed it. It is a data clean-up tool, not legal advice.

Price. The scan is free and read-only; bulk edit is not part of the free scan. A Cleanup Pass is $199 once for 90 days of one Clio account and includes bulk edit; Monitor is $29 a month and includes bulk edit and 50 merges a month. Checkout is by Paddle on Tidyroll's own site.

About Tidyroll

Which route fits

• A handful of contacts: Edit beside each name.
• Custom field values for many existing contacts: Clio's custom fields template.
• Applying tags to many contacts: Clio's native contacts table, without a separate paid app.
• Other bulk contact corrections with preview and undo: consider Tidyroll if your firm signs in at app.clio.com, after checking that the current app supports your intended change.

Atesen Software is independent. Clio is a trademark of Themis Solutions Inc., and this page is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Clio. Clio help centre articles were checked on 23 October 2026; menus and plans can change.

Questions about this guide: support@atesensoftware.com.