Hi there,
I'm new to WP7 and realized that contacts on device are automatically synced to accounts in the associated live account!
Is there any way to disable live services or use the phone without having to associate with a live account?
No. A live account is required.. and you can't disable live contacts.
In the upcoming mango update you can hide them in your contact list, but prior to that it's not an option.
In my case my live contacts and my facebook contacts had some overlap, so I just linked the contacts from both to avoid having duplicates.
How about using a new live id without any contacts?
Argh!
That is a big deal is privacy is of any concern.
Andrmgi: by hiding do you mean keeping it on the device and preventing it from uploading to the live account?
surlary: a new account wouldn't help since it would automatically sync whatever contact you enter into the phone with a live account.
I think it is a reasonable request to not want your contact list on virtual servers! I don't think my friends would like me to hand over their contact info including home phone number to MS.
At one point when I just started, it asked if I wanted to associate a contact with one of the two email accounts (dafault live accout and gmail). I wish I could see that screen still. I'm thinking I could setup another email account that is not google and associate all contacts with that account.
Related
Recently purchased the Samsung Omnia 7, while I know this is still is a up and coming OS I was hoping someone could help me to make do of it for the time being…
My main issue; is the People hubs, it seems to add all my email accounts and inorder for me to get to a certain phone number I have to go through endless email address.
Is there anyway I can change settings so the People hub just displays phonebook contacts and not email address?
If no is there any applications as a simple phone book?
Other small issue, the screensaver can I disable the time and date? So it just displays the wall paper?
Many thanks in advance
1. nope. it will pull all your contacts for every account you add. i know what you mean as well in terms of that. the reason that there aren't any apps either is because there is no PIM API to access your contacts. so without this, there isn't yet an alternative to that. you can however quick jump the list by tapping on the accent colour square seperating each list group (looks like a [#] or [a] or ). and then quick jump to where you want. or you can hit the search button whilst on people hub to do a quick search.
2. again nope. this is how it is for all windows phones at present and i don't think it's going to change (add customisations) any time soon, unless we truly get a full jailbreak (dev unlocking is only thing rocking at the moment).
you can't disable contacts syncing from the primary live account. but you can for secondary ones. What i did was basically create a seperate wp7 live account and uploaded only the contacts that I wanted. Entered it as the primary account, which syncs all the contacts. I then disable email for the primary account.
Enter my proper hotmail account. Disable the contacts, calendar sync and enable only the emails. Rename it from Hotmail 2 to Hotmail.
That should get the job done.
digger1985 said:
you can't disable contacts syncing from the primary live account. but you can for secondary ones. What i did was basically create a seperate wp7 live account and uploaded only the contacts that I wanted. Entered it as the primary account, which syncs all the contacts. I then disable email for the primary account.
Enter my proper hotmail account. Disable the contacts, calendar sync and enable only the emails. Rename it from Hotmail 2 to Hotmail.
That should get the job done.
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Awesome reply!! Made so much difference.. the only bloody bad thing about this was inorder to make a hotmail account primary and secondary i had to reset the ruddy phone lol
I finally got a Windows Phone 7.
However my first gripe was the fact that when you use your live ID, it automatically decides to import all your contacts from MSN etc which is kind of stupid. So I ended up fixing that by creating a new account just for my phone.
Microsoft really need to add an option there, Do not sync live contacts!
As I handle all this through my Exchange service. Only use my live account for MSN.
Anyway so I decided to link my facebook account to my phone. That went great right up until I saw it importing all my facebook contacts! So I finally found the setting to only sync with contacts in phone, so now it's linked my phone contacts to my facebook by only whats on my phone.
However this is where I have an issue. I go to type a text message or email and look for a contact and it's showing ALL my contacts from facebook, yet they don't show in the People Hub. I specifically have the setting "Only add facebook information to existing contacts" checked.
My next issue is the fact Birthdays from Exchange to the Phone are not syncing up correctly.
Some will sync up correctly and others will be out.
The information is there on the Exchange and correct, and same in my Outlook. But WP7 sometimes decides that a contacts birthday will be out by a day. So far one day ahead.
E.G
Contact 1 Birthday 16th July on exchange, shows up as 17th July
They are also not appearing in the calendar
I have checked and regional settings on phone and exchange are correct. It can't be the exchange as it was syncing fine with WM 6.1.
Help!!!!
actually the birthday issue has been there since wm6.5 for me and still a mystery to me hehe.
danbriant said:
I finally got a Windows Phone 7.
However my first gripe was the fact that when you use your live ID, it automatically decides to import all your contacts from MSN etc which is kind of stupid. So I ended up fixing that by creating a new account just for my phone.
Microsoft really need to add an option there, Do not sync live contacts!
As I handle all this through my Exchange service. Only use my live account for MSN.
Anyway so I decided to link my facebook account to my phone. That went great right up until I saw it importing all my facebook contacts! So I finally found the setting to only sync with contacts in phone, so now it's linked my phone contacts to my facebook by only whats on my phone.
However this is where I have an issue. I go to type a text message or email and look for a contact and it's showing ALL my contacts from facebook, yet they don't show in the People Hub. I specifically have the setting "Only add facebook information to existing contacts" checked.
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It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
As for your Facebook contacts, they will continue to display in your messaging/mail auto-complete regardless of the setting you choose in the People hub. That setting simply hides them from view in the People hub, it does not remove them from your phone. You can still do a People search and find Facebook contacts (and other services if you have them sync'd), and when you compose a new sms/email, you can still use auto-complete to find a Facebook contact. Just because you don't have them as a specific contact in your address book does not mean you will not contact them ever, and so the phone surfaces that information in the case you ever need to. You simply have to ignore the other contacts, and continue on your normal contacts.
prjkthack said:
It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
As for your Facebook contacts, they will continue to display in your messaging/mail auto-complete regardless of the setting you choose in the People hub. That setting simply hides them from view in the People hub, it does not remove them from your phone. You can still do a People search and find Facebook contacts (and other services if you have them sync'd), and when you compose a new sms/email, you can still use auto-complete to find a Facebook contact. Just because you don't have them as a specific contact in your address book does not mean you will not contact them ever, and so the phone surfaces that information in the case you ever need to. You simply have to ignore the other contacts, and continue on your normal contacts.
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That is really stupid. I choose to not show them for a reason as I don't want hundreds of contacts in my contacts list for messages and emails.
Does Mango solve this issue?
Also I'm guessing there's no way to choose what info gets imported for each contact, as some contacts on facebook input invalid phone numbers etc and well they are now clogging up my phone with useless info.
Kind of stupid to not have options to control what can and cant be linked and displayed!
prjkthack said:
It automatically decides to import it because that was the way the phone was designed. To stay in sync with your Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, Calendar, Xbox, Zune, etc. Certain things can be disabled for the most part, but the phone was designed to take these things from the cloud and put em on your phone. The phone was built for those who primarily use Windows Live and it's services. Just like how Android phones are built for those who use Google services.
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Android does at least give you the option to disable syncing contacts with google though.
danbriant said:
That is really stupid. I choose to not show them for a reason as I don't want hundreds of contacts in my contacts list for messages and emails.
Does Mango solve this issue?
Also I'm guessing there's no way to choose what info gets imported for each contact, as some contacts on facebook input invalid phone numbers etc and well they are now clogging up my phone with useless info.
Kind of stupid to not have options to control what can and cant be linked and displayed!
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Click to collapse
Guess that all depends on how you look at it. I filter my People list to ones only in my Hotmail contacts, sync Facebook info with those only in my People list, and enjoy it when the messaging app allows me the flexibility to still contact those who have contact information but are not displayed in my People list. Again Windows Phone 7 is a socially connected phone designed to help keep you in contact with your Windows Live and Facebook contacts in addition to your regular phone book contacts (and just wait till Twitter and LinkedIn are finally available). So if you don't like that, then the phone is probably not for you.
Mango does not solve the "issue" since its by design, and therefore not an issue at all. I don't expect to it change anytime soon either since Facebook Chat is also integrated and the phone won't simply just exclude the people in Facebook Chat who don't exist on your phone, as that destroys the convenience of chat.
Just gonna be something you need to deal with I suppose, until the feature to further filter your contacts can be added.
I currently use Gmail as my main email account but obviously needed a windows live account which I set up using my gmail address.
I havent really bothered sorting my contacts out before but not I have a decent phone I'm doing it so I deleted them all from Gmail and added them all to Windows live and synced to my phone no problem.
I realise I can export my windows live contacts to a CSV file and upload to Gmail which is fine.
What I really want is for all my stuff to be in Gmail on an ongoing basis.
If I therefore set google contacts to sync to my phone will they only update one way i.e. if I add someone on my phone that will sync to windows live and not gmail? If so that will be very irritating as I will need to remember to go into gmail and add all the info and duplication is what I want to avoid.
I guess this is also the same with google calendars?
Pravind said:
I currently use Gmail as my main email account but obviously needed a windows live account which I set up using my gmail address.
I havent really bothered sorting my contacts out before but not I have a decent phone I'm doing it so I deleted them all from Gmail and added them all to Windows live and synced to my phone no problem.
I realise I can export my windows live contacts to a CSV file and upload to Gmail which is fine.
What I really want is for all my stuff to be in Gmail on an ongoing basis.
If I therefore set google contacts to sync to my phone will they only update one way i.e. if I add someone on my phone that will sync to windows live and not gmail? If so that will be very irritating as I will need to remember to go into gmail and add all the info and duplication is what I want to avoid.
I guess this is also the same with google calendars?
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Well, if it didn't sync both ways, it wouldn't be 'syncing' at all then now would it? XD
Syncing stuff with a Google account works the same way as it does with a Windows Live account. Any changes you make to the account will be sync'd both ways. I use Windows Live for my contacts, and Google Calendar for my calendar and it works fine.
Just, in regards to Google Contacts, you gotta watch out for those custom fields in a contact, as they don't seem to sync properly with the phone.
Ok thanks, well if I make them both match from the start (windows live and google contacts) and set the contacts to sync with google then in theory everything should match up and be the same in all 3 places regardless of if I add a new person on windows live, google contacts or the phone.
That what you mean yeah?
What are these custom fields you speak off? I've not spotted anything in there.
Sorry I'm not very clued up on all this technology business, I presume you mean fields in google contacts that arent within windows phone 7 or windows live meaning info will be missed when synced.
Are all the fields in windows live replicated in google contacts? (I know this is a lazy question)
Pravind said:
Ok thanks, well if I make them both match from the start (windows live and google contacts) and set the contacts to sync with google then in theory everything should match up and be the same in all 3 places regardless of if I add a new person on windows live, google contacts or the phone.
That what you mean yeah?
What are these custom fields you speak off? I've not spotted anything in there.
Sorry I'm not very clued up on all this technology business, I presume you mean fields in google contacts that arent within windows phone 7 or windows live meaning info will be missed when synced.
Are all the fields in windows live replicated in google contacts? (I know this is a lazy question)
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The custom fields are fields you can define in Google contacts. For example, you can add a ton of numbers for your contacts and rename the label to whatever you want, Windows Phone only recognizes the first couple of numbers with common labels (work, home, mobile), and after that won't sync the rest. Stuff like that.
Also, while you can link an existing contact to more than one contact syncing service (for example, to both Gmail and Windows Live) on your phone, when you create a new contact on the phone, it only makes that contact in one of your services (so either Gmail or Windows Live, your choice). Because it only syncs to one service, you'll eventually have to remake the same contact on the other account in order to keep all 3 in sync if that's your plan.
Windows Live and Google Contacts share the same basic fields, its just that Google allows you to make custom fields as well and Windows Live does not.
Thank you.
From what I've seen it will always sync back to windows live if you create one on your phone as there is no way to change what you sync to windows live which means I'm always going to have to manually add things back to google which is a real pain.
It looks like the only way round this is to make them match from the start and then periodically export them and upload to google which I guess doesnt take too long but still annoying.
They should really fix that and look at upgrading windows live as its so slow and clunky to use, takes ages to browse around it when adding contacts and editing them etc
Can somebody pls advise, whether there is a possibility to sync contacts on both WP7 device and cloud across all accounts from which you are pulling your contacts/email?
The idea is that I have 3 accounts - Gmail, Live and Exchange, and I want contacts to be sync'd to all of them, instead of having different sets of contacts on each account.
The reason is that when I go on a terminal that isn't my phone, I don't want to be missing contacts or contact updates.
This is not supported currently.
As an alternative solution: You must import all your contacts from different accounts and consolidate them on your Live ID associated with the device. In order to separate them from each other you can use "Groups" feature. Now you can access all your contacts via the Live ID.
I'm in a bit of a strange situation apparently when it comes to syncing contacts.
Between my wife and I, we have 4 gmail accounts: personal for me, personal for her, our us account, and then one more for my online nickname.
What I'm trying to do is have our contacts synced between each account. I'm able to get our contacts synced to the google server per account, but I can't get them to propagate to other accounts.
Doing some searching, it seems the most popular method to do this was a third party website soocial or something like that, which is no longer working.
Ideally I want to move to a system where everything is linked to contacts (e.g. facebook, twitter), and we have one giant list of contacts between us (makes it a bit easier to keep data updated with our mutual friends/family.).
Thanks!