I cannot find any mention of this problem on XDA developers (although I saw it unanswered on another forum), so I thought it might be helpful to share my experiences.
After the ICS upgrade to my Atrix 2, I noticed that, when I tried to edit a contact, I got the message, "Not editable from this app."
All of my contacts are listed as "Motorola Services contact." I presume that this means that they are stored locally on the phone. I have synchronization with Google's cloud servers turned off (due to lack of privacy and security), and I sync with Outlook locally on the desktop via the PC app "My Phone Explorer."
Why I was able to edit locally-stored contacts in previous versions of Android, but Google deleted the capability in ICS, I can only speculate ... maybe to 'encourage' us to share more of our data.
Regardless, the solution I found was to use a third-party application. With "Go Contacts" (and I am sure that there are others), I am able to edit my locally-stored contacts in the original Android database (so that I can go back to "People" or "Dialer" and see the revisions).
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.
I originally imported Gmail contacts last November but now I have a cleaned-up Gmail list. It would be easier to completely delete the gTab file and reimport, but I can't find how to so... nor can I find a likely suspect data file on the tablet. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Tom
Not sure but maybe you just have to remove your Gmail account and create it again. Probably it will sync the new contact list
BR
Somehow it appears to me that the e-mail app is separate from the contacts app, and I haven't found anything clarifying what must be done to delete contact entries. There do not seem to be any controls to delete contact records one at a time or as a checklist ala File Expert. I was using the tablet mail app before I decided to experiment with the contacts list. I thought I might recognize a likely data but not yet.
On my phone it's under Settings -> Accounts & sync but I don't see any such option on my g tab. Maybe just not exposed in the older version of TNTLite I'm running. Worth a look...
I am well aware that none of my apps will be portable unless somebody made an Android version that I can re-download, and that I obviously cannot carry over any of my settings either.... but does anyone have any suggestions on what would be the best way to port over contacts, documents (and convert them into whatever Android uses for it's equivalent of Office, if necessary) and other such data if one wants to make the switch from Windows Mobile to android? Either re-flashing their phone to run Android or just buying a new Android phone?
Embracing the Google account is the best thing. Adding everything to the 'cloud' gives you a permanent storage solution with the benefit of being able to sync it all to your device when you need it.
Contacts to Gmail Contacts
Pictures to Picasa
Documents and random files to Google Docs
Calender to Google Calender
..and so on.
What apps are you looking for Android versions of?
Sorry for taking a while to reply.
So then how would I go the Google route? Its a shame I will lose my call and IM logs but its not like I would expect such data to work between different operating systems.
Photos aren't an issue since I store those on MicroSDHC, I mostly cared about all my contact information and switching my MS Office Mobile formatted documents to whatever Android uses in it's place, even though those are on MicroSD too. The only real data I keep on the phone itself is installed apps and contacts.
And don't worry about my apps, at this point there really isn't any Windows Mobile app I care about anymore.
Just create a Google account and sign into that account on your Android phone. If you've added your contacts through the contacts section in Gmail they will automatically be synced to your phone.
Any settings, browser bookmarks etc, on your phone will sync and be backed up to your Google account.
The contacts were all added through my phone or though backups apps, none were added through Google, will it still back them all up?
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.
With Android 11, Google seems to have taken yet another step in the "making Android increasingly painful to use" direction by disabling the ability for device-only contacts to be available via the standard Contacts Provider. Because of this, I have to use Google-stored contacts on my Android 11 device in order for these contacts to be available to my apps. Otherwise, my apps don't see any contacts.
I have a rooted Android 11 device, and I'm hoping that there is some way that I could disable the standard Contacts Provider service and that I could then install an alternate, custom Contacts Provider service which knows how to access device-only contacts, and which knows how to make these contacts available to all apps that need contacts ... and which never will try to store my contacts on any of Google's servers nor anywhere else in the cloud.
Is it possible to disable Android's standard Contacts Provider service? And does such a 3rd-party Contacts Provider service exist?
Thank you in advance for any thoughts and suggestions.
Well, I think I found a solution to the issue that I'm trying to solve. And it doesn't require any new Contacts Provider service to be installed, after all.
First of all, I made sure that contacts syncing is turned off.
Next, I installed the "True Phone" contacts and phone manager app from the play store and made it my default phone app.
Then, I used that program to make a local backup of my contacts, which is one of its capabilities.
Following that, I froze the Contacts app, but I kept the Contacts Storage app active. I checked the permissions for the Contacts Storage app, and I see now that it has no network-related permssions. So apparently, it just looks at the local contacts database, and some other piece of software is what actually syncs Google's cloud-based contacts data with the local database. And by turning off contacts sync-ing, it seems like I have indeed disabled that process.
Then, I went from my desktop computer to http://contacts.google.com with the same login credentials that are associated with my Android device. I then permanently deleted all of the contacts there.
(I rebooted my Android device between each of these steps and also after the final step.)
Now, my SMS and phone apps still see the contacts info in my local database. And I can manage the local contacts backup and restore via that True Phone app.
There are probably other phone/contacts apps which also could be used for this. But True Phone works well enough for me.
So ... it turns out that no OS surgery is needed to mess with the contacts nor to install an alternate Contacts Provider service.
PS: And I now have learned something. I was asking about a "Contacts Provider service", but I now realize that the standard Contacts Storage app itself seems to be the "Contacts Provider".
And because I found out that this app does not even have network permissions, it seems clear that this app simply gets contacts from the locally stored sqlite contacts database, and therefore, I don't need to replace this app with anything else.
And so all I needed to do was disable contacts sync-ing, because that is what would sync contacts between Google's cloud and the local contacts database.
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
blackhawk said:
How long were you playing with it to get to this point? Fun times...
Cloud apps can be little terrors, the only one I use is Gmail. It's never been breached by malware in over 15 years. Lol, Outlook not so much so.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It took me around a day of on-and-off playing around sessions to figure this all out ... with some input from a few other helpful souls.
I agree about cloud-based services. I don't even use gmail. I run my own email server, so I use that to manage all my email accounts. I manage my own web servers and my own DNS servers, as well.
It's more work for me to manage those things, but I don't mind, and I actually enjoy that work, most of the time.