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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?
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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

Mass delete contacts

Somehow everytime I backed up my contacts on my s2 last year via Google they duplicated every time. Is there any app that can delete contacts by choosing them with a check box? I have + 900 contacts now on my n5

are they duplicated in gmail contacts? if so, highlight them all and merge contacts.
if they are just on the phone, go to settings > apps > all, then click on contacts storage and clear data. the phone should resync with google at that point

Hopefully you have your contacts synced with gmail op you can merge them or check mark them and delete in batches

I used the app 'contact remover' to delete all the duplicated contacts (750) and synced with Google. Hopefully it should work now, Google asked me to remove the contacts on the servers that I removed from my phone. For the case it didn't work I made a backup. vcf file.

If it synced to Google you should be able to clean it up from gmail.com. You may need to do it with a computer though.
Sent from my Nexus 5 using XDA Free mobile app

How do I delete all device contacts only?

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

Messages and Contacts will not sync to Gear S3 Frontier

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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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!