Is there a way to delete SIM contacts? - Captivate General

I realize there's an option to hide contacts from SIM. This is not what I want. Like other people, I am getting duplicate contacts when create a new message from the message app or if I try to create an email from the contact list.
Is there a way to mass delete contacts? I already have all my contacts under the phone/gmail contacts categories and the SIM contacts are redundant and causing my OCD to go haywire =S.

rurouni572 said:
Is there a way to mass delete contacts? I already have all my contacts under the phone/gmail contacts categories and the SIM contacts are redundant and causing my OCD to go haywire =S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only way I was successful in mass deletion of contacts on the SIM card was to remove the SIM, place it in an older phone that permitted mass deletion, and perform the task. Not sophisticated, but easy and successful.

Hmm...that's a bit annoying. Thankfully I still have my old phone, but I wish it were a feature in the captivate.

Annoying? Agreed...but fast and effective. Beats the heck out of deleting possibly hundreds of contacts one by one (as I would have had to do).

I'm not doubting the quickness and effectiveness. It's rather unfortunate though for the people who don't have their old phones. =/

Related

Some contacts do not display...

I find that a percentage of my contacts do not display. But if I do a search, I can find them in contacts.
Contacts are set to display Google contacts, and the contacts are in my Google My Contacts. They have phone numbers, and email addresses.
Anyone else see this, and have you found a fix?
I wonder if a different contact program will help.
I was experiencing a similar problem; however, mine was associated to having grouped certain contacts in other groups, such as 'Coworkers', but those contacts were not actually in 'My Contacts'.
My fix was by going to my google contacts online, going to 'All Contacts', Selecting 'All' and 'Moved to My Contacts'. Within a few seconds, the phone refreshed and all is well.
Well Darn!!!
Now, I'm back to not having all contacts show up on the list. Even though they are in My Contacts.
I just tried another fix: I cleared them all through Manage Contacts, and let it synch again. But still no go.
I may try another contact program, but I serious doubt that will help.
[SIGH] [/SIGH]
[EDIT]
I just discovered something else. First let me say, all this thread is initiated by the same contact not different ones. It is my wife who has been appearing/disappearing. No comments now ...
I found her in the list, but it has her last name as first name. But looking at the other contacts, they are fine, for the most part. But I do see some others with this problem.
So the issue is trying to figure out why Google Contacts mixes up the front/last names.
ewingr said:
I just discovered something else. First let me say, all this thread is initiated by the same contact not different ones. It is my wife who has been appearing/disappearing. No comments now ...
I found her in the list, but it has her last name as first name. But looking at the other contacts, they are fine, for the most part. But I do see some others with this problem.
So the issue is trying to figure out why Google Contacts mixes up the front/last names.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's simple
The phone contacts from SIM card and have mixed up last and first name. Synced from Google have proper order. And if you have the same phone number in any SIM card contact and phone book contact, you will discover some strange things too. Incoming call screen will use information from phone book, but history will use SIM card info.
So I fixed this issue - just deleted all contacts from SIM card
You have to check to see what "Group" they are in. I had the same issue for a while. Some were in Group work, some were in friends, some were in family, etc. I had to go into my gmail account and then fix all my contacts' info in there, then re-sync and it's worked fine from then on.
Thanks guys. I"m going to delete the SIM contacts.
Regarding groups: I was in fact 30 seconds ago looking again and notice I had my daughter in the Family group and in My Contacts.
The contacts book on the Captivate (don't know if it is Android, or Samsung) is strange. When I select groups at the top, it just has "Google Groups" as selection, as opposed to each separate group. She does show up there, and all groups are intermixed.
I installed Phonebook 2 contact manager, and on it I do have the various groups, but they are not populated.
Seems its messed up. I just cleared all contacts and let it resynch. Didn't help.
Just tried to find how to erase contacts from SIM, not finding how to do that. All I find is how to copy them to or from the SIM. I suspect I need another special app.
Contact Issues
I am also having issues with contacts and groups. It looks to me like an issue with the address book in the phone. I had a brand new SIM with no contacts, a wiped phone and sync'd with gmail contacts. They all appear to be there but none of my groups show up, just a gmail group that I didn't create.
I even tried using the AT&T Address book and syncing to the phone, still couldn't get groups to show.
I am pretty sure the issue is with the contact manager on the captivate. I was using the gmail contacts with the Aria I had for a few weeks before I returned it for the captivate and everything, including groups, worked perfectly.
I really hope we can get this resolved, I have several hundred contacts and really depend on groups. There was another thread that said if you used the phone storage and manually did everything on the phone it would show properly. With this many contacts that isn't even an option!
I too want it resolved.
I tried installing a different contacts program and same thing. But I suspect it uses the contacts DB that is native to the phone.
I'm a bit surprised there are not more posts or issues from others on this issue.

[Q] How to move contacts WITH PICTURES to GMail?

Hello,
My wife has the Samsung Epic 4G. When she first go it the Sprint store used a machine to move the contacts from her old flip phone to the Epic. Apparently the machine moved her contacts into "Phone" contacts, not "Gmail" contacts.
Since then, my wife has gone through and added pictures to many of the people in her contacts list.
I want to move her contacts list into Gmail so they are backed up. Is there any way to do this that preserves that pictures she has associated to the contacts?
I know I can export from the Epic and import the file back into Gmail, but this doesn't preserve the contact pictures. If the wife loses all of the pictures she'll kill me!
Is there *any* way I can move her contacts into Gmail and preserve the pictures? Any method, even if it requires root, is helpful.
Thank you!!!
How many contacts does she have? I don't know of an automated way to do it, but if you're willing to root her phone to do it, wouldn't it be less work (and less risky) to re-create them manually?
Just an idea,
-Fiend

[Q] How to add "phone-only, unsynced" contacts?

I can't find the answer to this questions anywhere, so I thought the good old xda community could help.
I have two exchange accounts set up in my phone and no Gmail accounts. Before I was able to add contacts as "phone only, unsynced". Now that I have the exchange accounts whenever I want to add a contact I have to choose one of those two accounts but there is no option to save "phone-only".
Question: How can I add phone-only, unsynced contacts?
Thanks in advance for any insights!
Try turning off sync temporarily on both email account under Setting-->Accounts then add a contact and see if that gives you the unsync option back when adding contacts. Let me know how it goes
Sync is off in both accounts. I only receive email through push. Thanks for suggestion though! Any other ideas?
Any ideas on this? Appreciate any help!
Possible answer
Sorry for reviving such an old thread but I had this problem and while I was searching for a solution this came up so for the sake of completeness here is a possible answer.
There is an app that allows you to import appointments from iCal files now while that is not you issue to do this the app creates a dummy account on the phone that is unsynced and from my experience you are able to add contacts under that account.
So hopefully this works for you.
Also just to mention this app is not mine nor have I had any input into it.
The app page: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=905213
Solution
Hi, I'm looking into upgrading my Motorola Atrixand in the meantime decided to update android. Immediately following the update (to 2.3), I realized that my old SIM contacts were missing. However, I noticed the missing contacts, although deleted from my SIM were somewhere on my phone. Ex. in my text history, the names were still there. I could click on a contact and when in edit mode, it read: unsynced contacts from att address book. I found no solution on android forums, etc. So I logged in to att.com and performed a search. It lead me to instructions on how to migrate contacts from 1 phone to another. I know I'm only referring to the same phone, but I tried it anyway. It worked!!
All you need to do is go to contacts, menu, export to sd card (hopefully your phone supports external storage). Then import from sd card. All my contacts are back. I first tried to export to SIM card, but It didn't work (however, this is where I could visually see my missing contacts as it allows you to select - I have over 800 contacts so I dont have time to go through the list) - I'm guessing this issue occurred to people whose complete contact list would not fit on the SIM. Probably if your contact list did fit on the SIM you did not experience this issue. If it happened to you and you do not have external storage I guess you could still use the SIM option by selecting a few contacts at a time - if you maxxed out the SIM storage you would need to delete them from SIM before copying more.
Anyway, once you do this it adds all contacts to the Google address book so you're now good to switch phones and get them just by adding your Google acount.
Hope this helps some folks - I was feeling desperate without about 150 of my oldest contacts.

[Q] Contacts Management & Duplicates

I have moved contacts from SIM to phone, added contacts over time, and before changing phones, moved all contacts to the SIM creating duplicates. Some I think are from facebook and have no numbers. Some I have up to 5 duplicates.
In display options I have "Only contacts with phone numbers" unchecked with everything below also checked. A particular contact has 6 entries. A couple have numbers, most are empty and one facebook. When I select show only contacts with numbers I get 2. When I go to SIM management to export to SIM I see 6 again. There is no way to distinguish which has a number or any way to filter. All there is, is a checkbox and a name 6 times. I even merged the 5 of them and when I went to export to SIM I saw all of them separately again.
I can't write all 800+ to the SIM so how can I only transfer the ones with numbers attached??? The only way I can delete the contacts without numbers is to open the contact, see if it has a number and delete. I seriously don't want to do that 500 times.
Is there a smart way to write only the contacts with numbers to the SIM? I surely would appreciate the help!
Running 2.3.6
Why are you saving to sim card? Just manage them in contacts app and they sync with Google account between devices. There's an option in Google desktop contacts to merge duplicates.
BTW, sim contacts are stored as one contact per number. So a phone contact with 2 numbers will actually create 2 separate entries when exported to sim card.
I'm looking up Google Contacts and it has been discontinued. I found Google Desktop, but then started running across all these plug-in and fixes for different problems of mismatched databases...
I write them to the SIM so I can switch it another phone and have them all. It's just how I've been doing it since before any back-up capabilities. I suppose I need to open a new email account that doesn't have a couple of hundred email addresses to deal with and no phone numbers. Facebook contacts got copied as a name only because they were an entry I guess. No email address or anything.
I do need to find some way of merging all the duplicates. Do you have another suggestion that's not going to require me to read and dig up a discontinued program that I can continue to use? lol
I'm referring to the contacts in your Google (i.e. Gmail) account, certainly no discontinued and no plugin required, just log into it from a browser and go to the contacts tab. All of your contacts should be synced from your phone and you can find duplicates and merge there, which will then sync back to your phone.
Guess I'm making the assumption that you have a Gmail or Google apps account, which is almost a necessity with an Android device.
^ what he said. Its much easier to manage contacts in Gmail and have it sync over. If you change number or lost your phone no need to ask people for their number ever.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium
I agree that it's easier to maintain it how you say.
That was nuts! I thought they were already synchronized with gmail, but I guess not. I went through and deleted what I wanted in gmail, then everything in my phone. I went to sync bac and it said it couldn't becuase of too many deleted contacts. I thought, yes, just delete them. Then I watched all my contacts disappear from my gmail account on my PC. Gmail has a cool feature to resore contacts as they were minute by minute. Eventually I got the whole list back and on my phone.
Thanks for the help! Saving them to the SIM is old school now...
I rooted my phone last night and thinking about installing ICS, the second leaked version UCLD2 because I'm not liking the lock screen on 2.3.6. I want to find a setup for my Skyrocket that people are liking, but that's kind of hard.... Hey, here's a great ROM. Camera is broken, WiFi has issues, screen gets stuck in wrong orientation... but it's great! Does't seem to be much out there for the Skyrocket. I was looking in the forum here under my correct phone type. Suggestions? I know, wrong thread, just asking a BTW...
ROM
check out skyrocket Android development for Listing of Roms. I'm using SKYICS
I think that's where I got the UCLD2. I don't like it at all. I don't know if apps don't work because they're not ready, of if it's this version of ICS. People say it sucks for the battery and it's because messaging sits there and uses 90 of the cpu even in my pocket and the phone gets hot for no reason. I'll look up yours. Thanks Raven
Just click menu and merge with google
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA

What is the best way to manage contacts?

What is the best way for me to go through and organize my contacts for my Google account?
My list is so sloppy and looks bad with duplicates, some several duplicates. I know sometimes in the past I would attempt it just with manually deleting and checking all names/numbers and I would often get some sort of message saying I couldn't delete this contact for some reason(I forgot what the reason it said was).
I would prefer to edit this list on my PC, but if this easier done with some sort of app then I'm down. I also want my new organized list to sync across all my devices that sync contacts from my google account.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
On the website (https://contacts.google.com) you can identify duplicates.
You can also export your contacts on your PC (CSV or vCard format).
And you can pretty simply merge duplicates so that if, for example, one has a landline number, a second has a mobile, a third has an address, etc., you can put them all in a single entry with a mouse click.
I was in your position a few months ago and it took me about half an hour to whip my contacts list into shape.
I exclusively use contacts from my gmail/Google account. I never ever have them on the phone or the sim. In case I lose or break or change the phone, I never lose a contact and never have to re-enter them. I'm very OCD about things like that and being able to sit at my PC and standardize all contacts is worth a ton to me. Using the above cited Google contacts link is my preferred method.

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