Database Info

Anything to automatically restore FB/Contact Links?

One of the bigger time wasters I have when I'm updating my rom to the newest version (using Cognition right now) is going through all my contacts and linking my Gmail contacts with my Facebook ones and whatnot. It's just annoying. Not a deal breaker or anything. I was just curious if there was any way to back up those links and restore them after a rom update. Anyone know?
Thanks.

I want to know that too!

Anyone know this??

Didnt realize that the links wouldn't be saved that's pretty huge for me considering the number of contacts I have and the time I spent fixing it all up... Ugh. There must be a way to save this across flashes?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I896

Usually I have my contacts synced to google, but for some reason after I restore everything the contacts are all mixed up. One person's facebook will now be linked to another person's email and to another's phone number. It is annoying and I sometimes call the wrong person.

I'm looking for an app to do this as well - either that, or an app that can automatically link your gmail contacts to their Facebook accounts if one exists. I thought about writing such an app myself but I doubt my android programming skills are good enough haha.

Haha this too bothers me :x.. Considering my 600+ friends on FB
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

It works if you are willing to pay
I use fonebook and gsync to get the profile pics into Gmail. I'm not sure it will work with the media links but it keeps the profile pics up to date without manual intervention.

Anyone?
Really? No one has a solution for this?? I've flashed about 6 roms so far and EVERY TIME i have to manually relink my FB contacts to my phonebook. It's quite useful to have them linked but no more rom flashing until I can restore these links more easily. My phone needs to work for me, not the other way around.

when you add the fb account just select the "add all friends" option. this adds all and joins 97% of my fb and google contacts.
this will, of course, add ALL your fb contacts. I enable "display only contacts with phone numbers" in the contacts settings.

If you just want pictures, SyncMyPix in the market works like a charm.

I wish
I have asked this question a few times. No replies, so all I can add is if someone does make this app I will pay for it.
To help your situation some, what I have started to do is change my contact names to start matching their facebook names and the auto sync does it's thing. kinda lame I know

allted said:
I have asked this question a few times. No replies, so all I can add is if someone does make this app I will pay for it.
To help your situation some, what I have started to do is change my contact names to start matching their facebook names and the auto sync does it's thing. kinda lame I know
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, I keep most the names the same and it auto links the accounts. For the few I have named differently it takes all of 3 min to link them.

I use Titanium backup and IIRC, when I restore my contacts with this app, the facebook linked contacts are intact. It is the one under the system data batch called contact storage.

in facebook, i use androgyny:
http://apps.facebook.com/androgyny/
You link your facebook contacts with your gmail contacts and it puts the profile pic directly into your gmail contacts, which in turn wirelessly syncs with your phone. so far its working pretty well for me.
one issue: it doesnt auto-update. So you'll have to manually update the app in order to pull in any new profile pics.

People Widget doesn't "remember" defalt actions for contacts

Well, i gave up setting default actions to "call mobile" to all contacts that i have inside of this widget, as every time i reboot they all are gone except the #1 contact in it, that has the setting stored.
Do you have the same behaviour?
Maybe there's some possible fix for that?

I have the same thing going on with mine. I have about 8 contact so far and only 5 of them will keep the default action, so i just gave up until its fixed. Hopefully it will be fixed in the update.

I had this problem and have found the fix....works for me.
Go to the web site for Gmail and put the contacts that you want to keep a "default action" in the "Starred in Android" folder.

No issues here. All mine are sticking. I have them backed up to my exchange server though and did my initial sync to bring them in.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App

Ok, what is the proper way to save your contacts so that they sync with the phone and gmail account. noob to android and this is confusing me.Or is there a step by step somewhere that tell you the proper way of doing this. searched and found alot of different ways of doing this but still confused. please help.
Thanks

chrisg1548 said:
Ok, what is the proper way to save your contacts so that they sync with the phone and gmail account. noob to android and this is confusing me.Or is there a step by step somewhere that tell you the proper way of doing this. searched and found alot of different ways of doing this but still confused. please help.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure. I've been syncing with exchange since smart phones existed and when I setup my exchange account on my new phones it just pulls everything in. My last phone was an HD2 so I had the people widget setup on that. Every sense Rom I used after that has just synced and pulled them in.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App

Andy-D said:
I had this problem and have found the fix....works for me.
Go to the web site for Gmail and put the contacts that you want to keep a "default action" in the "Starred in Android" folder.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It helped, i sent you thanks

chrisg1548 said:
Ok, what is the proper way to save your contacts so that they sync with the phone and gmail account. noob to android and this is confusing me.Or is there a step by step somewhere that tell you the proper way of doing this. searched and found alot of different ways of doing this but still confused. please help.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What i did was exported all my contacts from my previous phone (nokia n900) to vcard, then in gmail i went to contacts page, imported all contacts from vcards. then in my HTC i just set to sync with my google account and voila, it works

Problem using shared google calendar

SWBMO has recently got a One S, cracking phone! Noticed something odd last night in that i didn't see new calendar entries she's been putting in. For years we have used a shared calendar on google no problem but with the one S she can only add events to her own google calendar. Although the shared one appears in the drop down it won't select ( PC Sync will )
Quite frustrating, more so as trying to work around it I managed to delete the shared calendar!
Anyone found this?

Had a response from htc support.apparently you can only sync the primary google calendar not secondary ones,.new one on me, our shared calendar has been working fine until now!
The one s will see multiple calendars she just can't add events to others!
I await the next update!

Same issue here. Disappointing that a feature that worked and was heavily used on my 2-year-old Vibrant doesn't work on my brand new One S. I hate to have to buy a replacement app for one that should work as expected, but I can't wait for a fix.

HTC have come back and said it is an interesting issue and they are investigating.
I have done some more testing though. I created a new calendar and shared between our accounts. After sync I can see it in the multi calendar menu in the normal calendar app. When I add an event on her phone I go to the drop down at the top and see it listed.
Select the new calendar and it does go in the right place. But the issue seems to be the field at the top doesn't change from Google to reflect the calendar name so you don't actually know where you are entering it, could be any of the google calendars. They seems to have removed the variable part of that if it's a google calendar.
Don't know if it's the effect of creating the new calendar makes it kind of work or whether it just wasn't obvious before.

I reported a bug to HTC, who kept replying that "you can't add events to Google calendars other than your 'main' Google calendar". Then I did some more digging and figured out the same thing Scoop940 reported: you *can* add events to calendars other than your "main" calendar; the drop-down list just doesn't show the calendar you've selected.
One thing you still can't do, however, is "move" an existing event from one calendar to another. That ability wasn't present on my Vibrant running Froyo either.

Still ongoing with HTC this one, I have now sent endless screen shots from my sensation and wifeys One S to demonstrate the problem. It has now been passed to someone in the HTC Written team whatever that means and they now have the software info from the One S.
At the moment it feels like they are listening just hard to get through to them the problem. Change the static Google name back to a variable showing the calendar name, someone made the assumption that people only use one google calendar.
Will keep updated.

Well been recognised as a fault and escalated, although reading between the lines it says don't hold your breath!.;-)
Sent from my HTC Sensation using XDA

Thanks for the heads up on this. I am also able to create events in other calendars, the app just does not display the currently selected calendar at the top as you mentioned, so it's a pretty simple workaround.
Still, it's a bit annoying and it seems like a relatively easy fix, although I doubt it's high on the priority list.

Scoop940 said:
Well been recognised as a fault and escalated, although reading between the lines it says don't hold your breath!.
Sent from my HTC Sensation using XDA
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any movement on this problem yet?

Google Knows Best

While I'm a huge fan of Google products and services, there attitude of ignoring the masses when it comes to certain features that everyone wants/needs in the name of 'it's better' the way we designed it gets frustrating.
I'm hoping someone here knows a solution to this:
My contacts [not even the same name] keep getting merged/linked together automatically. It's happened on every Android device I've owned, and it's always happened to completely different names. I keep my contacts meticulously organized, and would never have a duplicate that would even need to be linked together. I've sent emails to Google asking how to disable it, etc. and they tell me it's a feature that everyone likes basically.
The most recent linking disaster was it linked my current girlfriend 'Lisa' with my ex-girlfriend 'Elizabeth' with TOTALLY DIFFERENT last names...WTF? So when I hit the dial button on the contact clearly labelled 'Lisa', and with her picture...I was actually calling my EX! Needless to say this led to a long argument that there was no way I could accidentally call me ex when trying to call my girlfriend, and blaming it on Google is ridiculous.
It's done this with a contact 'David', my then boss...and a contact labelled Dad...so when I tried calling work at 2AM (when I start) I actually woke up my dad in the middle of the night. There is no way of knowing when this happens unless I manually check every contact to see if there has been any merging or memorize everyone's phone number so I can see if it's really dialing the right number. It even linked my friend Charles, with Les Schwab Tire store once before.
Anyway, everything I've searched on the subject says that there should be some sort of notification asking me if I want to link/merge contacts, and to make sure to select 'NO'. I've never been notified though, and just get surprised at least once a month when my phone calls someone else, when I select a contact to dial.
Whoever knows the answer will save my life!
Thanks

JVogler said:
While I'm a huge fan of Google products and services, there attitude of ignoring the masses when it comes to certain features that everyone wants/needs in the name of 'it's better' the way we designed it gets frustrating.
I'm hoping someone here knows a solution to this:
My contacts [not even the same name] keep getting merged/linked together automatically. It's happened on every Android device I've owned, and it's always happened to completely different names. I keep my contacts meticulously organized, and would never have a duplicate that would even need to be linked together. I've sent emails to Google asking how to disable it, etc. and they tell me it's a feature that everyone likes basically.
The most recent linking disaster was it linked my current girlfriend 'Lisa' with my ex-girlfriend 'Elizabeth' with TOTALLY DIFFERENT last names...WTF? So when I hit the dial button on the contact clearly labelled 'Lisa', and with her picture...I was actually calling my EX! Needless to say this led to a long argument that there was no way I could accidentally call me ex when trying to call my girlfriend, and blaming it on Google is ridiculous.
It's done this with a contact 'David', my then boss...and a contact labelled Dad...so when I tried calling work at 2AM (when I start) I actually woke up my dad in the middle of the night. There is no way of knowing when this happens unless I manually check every contact to see if there has been any merging or memorize everyone's phone number so I can see if it's really dialing the right number. It even linked my friend Charles, with Les Schwab Tire store once before.
Anyway, everything I've searched on the subject says that there should be some sort of notification asking me if I want to link/merge contacts, and to make sure to select 'NO'. I've never been notified though, and just get surprised at least once a month when my phone calls someone else, when I select a contact to dial.
Whoever knows the answer will save my life!
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never noticed this...what version of Android are you on and what phone do you have?

In haven't seem it either...are you talking about the "merge duplicate" feature? Did you happen to leave the first or last name blank?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app

electricpete1 said:
In haven't seem it either...are you talking about the "merge duplicate" feature? Did you happen to leave the first or last name blank?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's happened on my Atrix running GB, also on my Note running ICS. It's happened to 3 other people's phone I know.
I think you might be on to something...it does seem to happen most often to names where I have no last name entered. It merged 'Lisa' with no last name to "Elizabeth" with a last name. It has merged 'Dad' with quite a few different names beginning with D.
They are not merged/linked when viewing contacts on the web in gmail...they are still separate there. It just merges them on the phone only. The most recent one I can't figure out the algorithm behind thinking these were duplicates and merging them automatically was: [Lowe's] and my friend [Lana], Hit her picture from my favorites menu, and got the Lowe's Home Improvement store. Her picture was displayed on the dialing screen and everything. Had to go into contacts, choose 'un-link', and sure enough it had automatically merged to two contacts after sitting separately for years.

This isn't Google. This behaviour is of the stock contacts applications by Motorola and Samsung. Each one modifies the Google contacts app in their own way, especially with regard to linking of contacts and social networking. You'll be better off asking in your device forum to see if others are facing this issue, and contacting Motorola or Samsung about it. It doesn't happen on AOSP Android ROMs, and on pure Android devices like the Nexus line.

trenches oriedto
sashank said:
This isn't Google. This behaviour is of the stock contacts applications by Motorola and Samsung. Each one modifies the Google contacts app in their own way, especially with regard to linking of contacts and social networking. You'll be better off asking in your device forum to see if others are facing this issue, and contacting Motorola or Samsung about it. It doesn't happen on AOSP Android ROMs, and on pure Android devices like the Nexus line.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is definitely the best advice. I had this problem when I got the original Evo which was running Sense. Your phone might be trying to link similar contacts as well as facebook contacts if you've logged into the facebook app and let it sync contacts. I recommend going directly to your Google Contacts and doing a bit of organizing and cleaning. Once you have that cleaned up it will hopefully not mis-link your contacts again, even when you log into facebook or something like that.

h0phead said:
This is definitely the best advice. I had this problem when I got the original Evo which was running Sense. Your phone might be trying to link similar contacts as well as facebook contacts if you've logged into the facebook app and let it sync contacts. I recommend going directly to your Google Contacts and doing a bit of organizing and cleaning. Once you have that cleaned up it will hopefully not mis-link your contacts again, even when you log into facebook or something like that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Right. I did that when I first got my phone. I named all my contacts properly (First name, Last name) so the Sense Facebook sync linked my Facebook contacts correctly. If you want to keep nicknames rather than formal names, then adding all your contacts' email addresses from Facebook will also link them correctly regardless of name. Even if your email addresses and contact names don't match with Facebook, you have an option of manually going through all your contacts and linking them (in HTC Sense). You'll only need to do that once as Sense stores an '< HTCdata >' tag in the 'Notes' field of each contact indicating which Facebook contact it is linked to, so any future sync will immediately link the contacts based on this tag. The best Facebook sync app for AOSP ROMs, HaxSync, also makes use of these tags.
Organizing your Google contacts just once in your life goes a long way.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium

[Q] Nexus 5 won't sync gmail contacts?

Hi All,
I tried to find something similar but to the best of my searching abilities, nobody seems to be having the same issue.
I've been using an HTC One (a GNex before that) for the last few months. When I got it, like my other previous Android phones, at the initial setup it pulled down all of my contacts.
When I set up my N5, however, the contact list was the last one from my GNex! The hundreds of new contacts since then are not on the new phone. It's enough to make me want to just sell the phone instead of going through each contact individually.
On my HTC one in the People app it shows 494 contacts under my gmail address, and last sync was a few minutes ago. On the N5 I don't get the same screen, but I have a total of 123 people in the app, and it shows that it has synced with my gmail.
Does anyone know what's going on here, and how to get my contacts onto the N5?
Thanks!

You probably saved your new contacts on the htc on the phone not on google...
Change them to google or export them all and import into google.
ALSO, make sure you had the htc one set to sync contacts...settings..accounts...google...click on your email..

apristel said:
You probably saved your new contacts on the htc on the phone not on google...
Change them to google or export them all and import into google.
ALSO, make sure you had the htc one set to sync contacts...settings..accounts...google...click on your email..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My contacts are saved to Google. In my People app on the HTC, When I click to choose source, "Google (my email)" is selected, with 495 contacts.
As I said in the original post, everything is synced, and the last sync was a few minutes before the post.
I tried the export and import but all that did was double the number of contacts under my Google account (gmail address).
Is there anything else I can try?

I am currently using an iPhone 4 and the idiots at Apple have removed the option to export contacts to Google in their iTunes program... SO now I have installed a little app called Bump, that should help me transfer all my contacts to the new Nexus 5 when i get it. You can try it with your two phones if you like. Seems pretty simple, however i have never used it yet...
Here is a link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bumptech.bumpga&hl=en

well if what you said is true, you should be in the htc one forum, not the nexus 5. Apparently your htc is what messed up.
I really have to go with user error here, its pretty basic stuff. I highly doubt your htc one failed to sync contacts even though it was set to sync google contacts...if so..you are the "one."
I know that sounds rude, but, really.....its basic stuff here.
GOOGLE how to backup contacts and restore them on an android phone, unless you want your hand held here.

Hey whatever happened to the OP's problem ? Did he/she fix it ? I have recently transferred all my contact from my iPhone to my new N5 with absolutely no problems with this app. I can confirm it works like a charm and totally recommend it. It takes less then 10 seconds to complete everything. The actual transfer took like 1 second !!!

I have a similar issue.
I too am coming from an HTC One, but I don't think that's the problem in my case. I've logged into my Nexus 5 using my Google credentials, but none of my Google contacts are appearing. I checked my contacts list in Gmail from my laptop to be sure, and all my contacts are there. I went back to my Nexus 5 and manually synced contacts in the settings, but nothing changed; my contacts are still not showing up.
I would love to know if anyone has found a resolution to this issue.

Have you made sure that "Auto-sync app data" is checked off,
"All contacts" is selected in Contacts to display,
and "Contacts" is checked off in your Gmail sync account.

Are you using a corporate Google account? You may need to ask your administrator for help.

Did you log into http://contacts.google.com and see if they are shown there? If so they must also be in My Contacts which the HTC might not be setting. Also on your phone, check settings and then check if they are in another folder just not being displayed.