Hi everyone,
I've been searching for an app to do this but I haven't found one. I might write up one soon but I'm too busy, so today I found a relatively simple way to do it manually. Basically, this gets Facebook contact information, including email and phone numbers, of all your friends and copies them to your Gmail contacts. There are quite a few steps, but this is really something you have to do once. When this is all said and done, your Google contacts will have all the necessary information, and you don't have to worry about rejoining all the contacts if you lose the data (by flashing a new ROM, for instance).
Things this will not do:
1. Grab contact photos. There might be a way around that, but I'm not sure.
2. Link social media, like statuses and such. This is all STATIC information.
3. This only works on Galaxy S phones (I think). Other phones might be able to follow the same general procedure if they're able to import ALL facebook contact into the phonebook.
This assumes that all of your contacts on your phone are synced to your primary Gmail account.
So, here's the procedure.
1. Create a backup of your Google contacts, save them to your Desktop. You can do this by going to Gmail -> contacts -> Actions -> Export.
2. To be safe, you can export your phone's contacts as well, in case something goes wrong. To do this: Contact -> Menu -> Import/Export -> Export to SD.
3. Import ALL of your Facebook friends into your contacts. To do this: Menu-> Get friends -> Check all of them, then press Save. This part can take awhile, so be patient.
4. Export all of your contacts to your SD card again. Contacts -> Menu -> Import/Export -> Export to SD. This includes ALL your contacts, existing and facebook contacts, but the important part is that the Facebook contact information is included. The file will be named 0000x.vcf, where x is some number, and it should be located under /sdcard/external_sd.
5. Transfer that .vcf file to your computer. You'll need a file manager like Astro, and you can email the file to yourself.
6. In google contacts, create a group called "Original Contacts", and add all of your current contacts to that group.
7. Also, create another group called "Facebook" (or whatever).
8. In google contacts, import your .vcf file, which was exported from your phone. To import: Contacts -> Actions -> Import. Check the option "Add all contacts to this group:" and pick the group "Facebook".
9. When that's done, go to "My Contacts" -> Actions -> Find and merge duplicates. Check to be sure that the right contacts are being merged, then press OK. All of your existing contacts that have associated Facebook information will be merged.
10. Go to your "Original" contacts group, and remove the "Facebook" contact label from all of them.
11. Go to the "Facebook" group, select all of them contacts, and delete them.
12. Ta da!!! All of your original contacts now have Facebook information right in Google contacts, and data portability is no longer an issue! All the contacts you didn't care about are also gone as well!
13. This step is optional. By doing this, you might find that you'll get contacts that have duplicate entries for phone numbers. To fix this, you can export the "Original" contacts group as a CSV file, open it up in Excel, and quickly remove all the duplicate phone number entries. This is actually a very quick process - it took me about 2 minutes. Save that file, then go into Google and delete ALL of your contacts. Then, import that CSV file you just edited. Now, you have all of your contacts but all the duplicate data entries have been removed.
14. Clean up: you can delete the Facebook group and the 'Original' contact group, as those were just to keep things organized.
Photos are probably not preserved. They weren't for me - other people might have different results based on whether they perform the optional step or not.
I hope this helps everyone!
Related
I've decided to go "All Google" after having had two different Android phones and getting Gmail, but finding it horribly fustrating trying to follow Googles way of doing things.
1. All my phone contacts are stored on the phone, not as Google Contacts.
- In the "People" view on my Legend I only show "Phone" contacts.
- There is no way to move phone contacts to Google Contacts
2. I exported all phone contacts to a file and imported these into Google/Gmail contacts
- Viewing both Phone contacts and Google Contacts doubles up a lot of my contacts.
- A solution is linking these, but this only helps with the view on the phone, not the whole Google contact eco-system
- All info stored on the Phone contact, doesn't get imported into Google Contacts.
- All contacts imported are stored in "My Contacts"
- I only sync "My Contacts" with my Android phone, as the others contain people I will never ever call (example: Ebay seller)
- Now choosing only to show Google Contacts on my Legend looses picture information I have stored on my Phone Contact
3. I also use Picasa (and this is where it gets tricky)
- I have created People in Picasa and tagged thousands of pictures.
- I now have "Person A" created in Picasa and I have "Person A" in Gmail Contacts and on my Adroid phone.
- When logged into Web Albums, I select "Sync with contacts....." on "Person A" in Picasa.
- I then get "Person A" in "My Contacts" and two "Person A" in my "All Contacts".
- When I merge these two contacts, it removes it from "My contacts" and keeps one in "All contacts".
- This means "Person A" is removed from my Android phone since this is the folder I sync with it.
I think this is a mess..............it's holy fustrating!
Basically, I'm inquiring how you people use or have set up your Contacts and whats the best way to get a unison Contacts information?
I ran to a similar problem when I switch to a Google phone. I had to export my phone contacts, upload them to Google contacts and then one by one sort and organized them. It took me a week but once done its nice I can switch from one Android to another and my contacts will be safe.
Sent from my HTC Evo 4g 2.2 (Rooted)
What i think its contact is messy is it shows only one big group- Google contact
I sort them well in the Google contact but i can't see any groups in my phone
I have so many groups of people it is so hard to find them...
I deleted all contacts from my phone. Imported them in Google and manage them in Google.
For extra keepsake, every once in a while, I backup all my contacts to a vCard file that I keep on my PC and in my email.
Hello.
I've got big problem which ate almost all my yesterday's free time.
Well, I have nandroid backup from may where I have correct(so called "Correct") contacts photos. Sadly when I restore it and sync with my Gmaill acccount it overwrite all Correct avatars these from Gmail.
What I want is to sync Correct contact photos from nandroid backup back to Gmail. I tryed a lot of different ways: delete contact on gmail, editing them on phone etc. None of them worked correctly. It's all the time overwriting Correct avatar.
Maybe there is any way that I can copy all contact photos so I can upload them on computer(it would take few minutes to do it)? If not what else I can do?
I hope you'll understand me.
You could:
1) restore the backup and reboot the phone without a sim card to prevent the automatic sync (or you could just be quick and disable your data connection right after the reboot)
2) save your contacts to sd card (there is an export/import option somewhere)
3) go to the google contacts website, delete all your contacts
4) delete all your contacts on the phone
5) import the contacts you saved to your google account with the google contacts website
But export contacts to SD Card doesn't export contact pictures, does it?
evolucja said:
But export contacts to SD Card doesn't export contact pictures, does it?
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I'm not sure about this, sorry...
Did this procedure for other reasons a long time ago.
It doesn't, because it's exporting contacts to .csv file and when I tryed to open it on computer contacts didn't have pictures. After all the file is too small(about 230kb) to contain contact icons..
I'll print a picture and post it on the wall of person who would help me. Maybe someone knows where are contacts thumbnails stored in Android?
My contacts are in such a mess! I have them synced from google as well as the odd few from Exchange.
Google stopped syncing my contacts so I deleted the data from contacts storage which fixed that but now they are all merged or not existing.
I have removed google account and exchange but there are still contacts showing. I think these have been created internally from whatsapp which is annoying. Is there a way to delete all of these in bulk?
Or any other solutions to fix this?
First write correctly the title, seriously how people will know what is it about...
Then you have to solutions:
1st: sync all accounts you have then go to contacts > contacts to show > custom > select the one you want.
2nd: (this is what i do usually)
export all contacts on the phone
Backup the export
Delete all google contacts, everything on phone etc
Import them back in google contacts (https://www.google.com/contacts/)
search for duplicate in google contacts
rename them correctly
do the same with Exchange
Sync
clean the mess
delete useless contacts (like the pizza you ordered 4 years ago)
set up groups (like "i never phone them but i keep them in memory", "work", "favorite"
and then do the first solution to select the categories you want to show
The first 4 points are optionnal and if you do them PLEASE take care and be sure you have a BACKUP if you mess up everything
This will get your contacts clean and they will merge with all the differents accounts (like exchange+google+google plus+whatsapp etc)
Nikueltrasgu said:
First write correctly the title, seriously how people will know what is it about...
Then you have to solutions:
1st: sync all accounts you have then go to contacts > contacts to show > custom > select the one you want.
2nd: (this is what i do usually)
export all contacts on the phone
Backup the export
Delete all google contacts, everything on phone etc
Import them back in google contacts (https://www.google.com/contacts/)
search for duplicate in google contacts
rename them correctly
do the same with Exchange
Sync
clean the mess
delete useless contacts (like the pizza you ordered 4 years ago)
set up groups (like "i never phone them but i keep them in memory", "work", "favorite"
and then do the first solution to select the categories you want to show
The first 4 points are optionnal and if you do them PLEASE take care and be sure you have a BACKUP if you mess up everything
This will get your contacts clean and they will merge with all the differents accounts (like exchange+google+google plus+whatsapp etc)
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Click to collapse
Thanks - that makes sense. The dialler still shows 2 contacts even though in people and google website it shows 1!
As for the title I've no idea what happened! I must have typed in a special character or something that removed my title! Apologies!
Mom gave me her S7. Synced with Google, all my contacts are in. Now I realize there are still 2000 of HER contacts in the DEVICE storage. Some are automatically linked to MY google contacts.
How can I delete all the device contacts? If I set it to view device contacts only, select all, and delete, it says "all contacts will be deleted from linked accounts" ... doesn't this mean it will also delete the linked Google contacts?
That always trips me up too. What I actually do is make a backup of my Google account contacts. Save them safely somewhere on a computer. Then blow away all the phone contacts. If the Google contacts online are messed up I re-import the saved contacts online, then re-sync with phone. My way may be overkill, but it works for me lol. There may be an easier way.
I think I found an easier way.
1. Go to Settings > Applications > Application Manager
2. Tap More > Show System Apps
3. Scroll down to "Contacts Storage" (NOT "Contacts"), tap it
4. Tap "Storage", Tap "Clear Data"
That will delete all contacts, including Google, but then within minutes Google contacts will get restored via Sync.
Export your contacts from contacts.google.com before deleting anything, I deleted my phone contacts and lost them from gmail too (Luckily made a backup first) - but when you select contacts to be deleted it should only delete the ones you have selected, no others
Personally I would have factory reset the phone when your mom gave you it, before adding your own account
So export from gmail
Delete from phone
If all is well that's all you need to do, if it deletes them all you have your backup to import again
To some extent，Whatever data can be easily deleted from the phone, it's easy to recover on the phone, isn't it ?
As you said , how to delete contacts from Android phone , what is more that how do your make sure these deleted data can not be recovered back any more ?
You may be insterested in : https://www.safewiper.com/tutorials/android-data-eraser.html
Hello,
I have tried factory resetting my GS 8+ and the watch to start from scratch, but the watch will NOT pull contacts from my phone or sync messages. At this point, I feel there is nothing more I can do, so I am asking here.
Is there some magic I can pull to get this to work? Sucks I cant look at conversations or contacts on my watch.
Anyone?
psufan5 said:
Anyone?
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Click to collapse
Hello, I'm now experiencing the same issue with a Note 8 and upgrade to Tizen 4 on a Gear 3, did you get a resolution to this issue? Thanks.
Same here, except for contacts, they came back after I reinitialized the watch again...
Hello all, so following a comment regarding new contacts got transferred to the Watch, I thought what can I do for all my contacts be transferred to the watch. I thought what can I do, well deleted my contacts in my all accounts. So I did the following, but use at your own risk:
1. Backed up all my contacts in all my accounts on respective websites, google, office etc.
2. Tested I could restore above backups
3. On my phone, deleted all the contacts in all my accounts
4. Wait until the accounts resysnc
5. Import backed up contacts into each account
6. Wait until the accounts resysnc on your phone
7. Wait until the accounts resysnc on your watch
8. Repeat 5-7 for each of your accounts
Hopefully a fix will be released shortly.
Got them to show up!
So, I basically did what cabbage65 did.
It appears that the only contacts that were showing on my galaxy S3 classic watch were the ones I added AFTER the tizen 4.0 update. So, we need a way to "re-add" all of our current contacts. Just back them up, delete your contacts, then import them from the back up file.
-I backed up my contacts from google to a .csv file (after you export it, make sure the file has all the info in it before you delete google contacts! Jut open it up and see); exporting is incredibly easy to do, once in google contacts, click on "more" on the left side menu and "export" should be there.
- delete all your contacts; simply select one, then on top menu you'll see a few new icons to click, one will give you select all options. then delete them.
- after that, go back to that "more" options on the left side menu, and you'll see "import" right next to where export was.
The only thing that sucks is you can't back up and import profile pics. So if you have any pics, you'll have to reapply them. I had 340 contacts, all are now showing up on my watch after this process (non with profile pics). I had profile pics for about 40 of them, which, when I have time, will do from my PC on google contacts instead of my phone. But this process works, no ifs, ands, or buts. And the profile pics do sync to your watch if you add them after importing contacts. I have tried it and it works like a charm.
Good Luck!