Database Info

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.

Google Contacts: a true mess!

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.

Edit Contacts Nightmare

Somehow my new Inspire synced with facebook, google, outlook (I guess) I have five or six entries for everyone. I linked some of them, but is there an easier way to get rid of the duplicates?

volumnus said:
Somehow my new Inspire synced with facebook, google, outlook (I guess) I have five or six entries for everyone. I linked some of them, but is there an easier way to get rid of the duplicates?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Faced with the same issue, I deleted all my phone contacts, removed the contacts sync on all my accounts, and then restored my previously exported up phone contacts backup.
And since the google contacts where all synced earlier, when I compose any email, it still prompts for emails from the previously synced contacts.
Best for u could be to take off the linking. Linking contacts messed up big time for me changing the display names, and not reverting to the one already on phone.

Go into your People app and touch Menu, choose View. Now remove checks from any account which you don't want your contacts displayed. I only have my Google contacts displayed (and have Facebook for HTC Sense only syncing with contacts in my address book for contact pictures). All other accounts (2 exchange, phone, sim, ect) are unchecked so i don't see these duplicates

I spent about two hours linking them all.
Now they only show up as one contact. It seems to be working ok so far. Will this slow down the phone, having so many duplicate, linked contacts?

I had exact same problem as you. What I did:
1. Made every contact show up (google sync, facebook, etc.)
2. Deleted ALL duplicates.
3. Saved to SD Card.
I never had a problem afterwards. I use google as a backup just in case though
I also believe that the duplicates are unnecessary, so I delete them, because I had like 4-5 duplicates for each contact.

Get GO contacts from market. Good app to manage contacts. I had 3000 "contacts" ... Came down to actual value of 200 using the app.
Sent by Skeletor from Castle of Greyskull using XDA Premium App

[Q] Let's handle (or at least clarify) the editing facebook contacts problem.

Greetings
I have had it just about enough of this Facebook virus and the contact importing in Android in general. What is the point of importing something if we have absolutely no control over deleting any of it?
The basic question is: How can I delete -some- contacts out of the imported Facebook contacts? Not how to delete all of them, not how to only show the ones with phone numbers, not how to merge them with other contacts.
Furthermore, please don't just answer "You can't.". At least not without explaining why exactly it is not humanly possible.
I have a rooted (xperia mini pro) phone, and I would like to reasearch just where and how are these uneditable contacts stored, and how to strike down on them with great vengeance and furious anger.
__________
What I suspect happens is, for instance, Skype downloads its own contacts and stores them for itself (because it needs them), and then Andorid reads these contacts and just displays them in the phonebook. So if we would want extra filtering functionality for skype contacts in the phonebook, we'd have to write our own phonebook app.
However, in Facebook's case, it does not need those stored contacts for anything other than this syncing functionality. Which means, what we could do is, access wherever this offline fb contact database is, and manually delete what we don't want to have. Right? then, when the phonebook app reads the fb contacts, it will just find the ones we care about.
Is that right?
+1 for any educated answers.

Contacts in MESSAGING not in 'Official' Contact list - how to clean up?

I have a weird problem - when I go to Messaging and select 'Contacts' to pick a recipient, I see duplicate, triplicate and even 4 contact selections for the same person, and even 'odd' contacts, like for email addresses. But when I go to APPS / CONTACTS, or if I go to Gmail/Contacts, I only see one (and none of the odd ones).
Does anyone know how to 1) clean up the SMS contact list or 2) only have it refer to the 'real' CONTACT list when selected or 3) how to merge them into one contact? I never know if I picked the correct one.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
Frank
Michigan

UPDATE: I figured out that these contacts are stored in Gmail as "OTHER CONTACTS". Not sure how they got there but after deleting them while in Gmail on the PC and SYNCing my S3, they disappeared. Apparently they only appear in Messaging, not in the CONTACTS under APPS or when searching for contacts while making a phone call....

FMinMI said:
UPDATE: I figured out that these contacts are stored in Gmail as "OTHER CONTACTS". Not sure how they got there but after deleting them while in Gmail on the PC and SYNCing my S3, they disappeared. Apparently they only appear in Messaging, not in the CONTACTS under APPS or when searching for contacts while making a phone call....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A lot of times those are the other contact emails and stuff you never linked and now will have to find those addresses that you have deleted. This is what link contacts is for. You link them together and then save as one in google. Hopefully you merged them together in Gmail instead of deleting them.

prdog1 said:
A lot of times those are the other contact emails and stuff you never linked and now will have to find those addresses that you have deleted. This is what link contacts is for. You link them together and then save as one in google. Hopefully you merged them together in Gmail instead of deleting them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I never saw any option to link them and in a lot of cases I already had the email address in the 'regular' CONTACT list. That is what was most confusing. If I selected that one, then they would not get the SMS. And a bunch of these were totally unwanted since they were only email addresses send to ???? (some started with sale, or customerservice, or....).
Bottom line, I no longer have crap in my 'Messaging Contact List' and don't have to worry if I selected the correct one (which, in the case of Messaging, would be the one with their mobile number).
Thanks for the reply, and Happy New Year.
Frank
Michigan