What is the best way for me to go through and organize my contacts for my Google account?
My list is so sloppy and looks bad with duplicates, some several duplicates. I know sometimes in the past I would attempt it just with manually deleting and checking all names/numbers and I would often get some sort of message saying I couldn't delete this contact for some reason(I forgot what the reason it said was).
I would prefer to edit this list on my PC, but if this easier done with some sort of app then I'm down. I also want my new organized list to sync across all my devices that sync contacts from my google account.
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On the website (https://contacts.google.com) you can identify duplicates.
You can also export your contacts on your PC (CSV or vCard format).
And you can pretty simply merge duplicates so that if, for example, one has a landline number, a second has a mobile, a third has an address, etc., you can put them all in a single entry with a mouse click.
I was in your position a few months ago and it took me about half an hour to whip my contacts list into shape.
I exclusively use contacts from my gmail/Google account. I never ever have them on the phone or the sim. In case I lose or break or change the phone, I never lose a contact and never have to re-enter them. I'm very OCD about things like that and being able to sit at my PC and standardize all contacts is worth a ton to me. Using the above cited Google contacts link is my preferred method.
Related
I searched for an answer a few days ago, and didn't find one. I kind of figured out how to do it so I'd figure I'd share with others who didn't know.
I've read how everyone seemed to be pretty frustrated with the groups tab in our contacts and I shared the same frustration because I like to send mass text messages to my employees...
The groups tab only allowed you to add people from your phone memory, and won't let you pull from synced accounts like fb Gmail myspace corporate accts etc.
Like most people on here.... Most of your contacts were synced to your phones... Meaning... You had no contacts in the phone's memory.
so.... Fooling around with my phone tonight, I tried to find a solution...
I found one! Kind of...
When in your contacts.... Hit the menu key, and click on export contacts (to sd).
Once exported to the sd card, click on menu again and click import contacts (from sd).
Be careful not to interrupt the phone as is imports your contacts, or you'll do what I did and stop it halfway and have to do it all over again, causing duplicate phone entries (lots of clutter).
The phone automatically linked most (probably 90%) of the imported contacts with the existing ones.
Now go back to the groups tab, add a group, and add members to the group (now that all of your contacts are now in the phone's memory).
Now for the "kind of" part of my post....
When in the messaging app... When sending a new Group text mssg, Click on groups.... It takes about 8 seconds (seemed like forever, I thought my phone froze) to load the groups... Then when you select the group, you have to individually select the contacts within the group....
Talk about time consuming!
I was hoping that when I clicked on the group, that it would at least automatically select everyone within that group.
So.... Now I gotta figure out how to send a group text with not so many clicks and in a timely manner...
Hey this is great but unfortunately I had my import interrupted part way through also and not all contacts came through. What did you do to clean up after you imported a 2nd time??
You can also use Samsung Kies.i had a100 or so contacts synced with Exchange. I installed Kies. I then synced my contacts to Outlook and back to my phone (errr, something like that). Anyways, it did as you said and linked my contacts, but I went one step further. I then removed my Exchange account to clearall the duplicate contacts, and then setup my Exchange account again without syncing contacts. I hardly every add contacts via Outlook. Usually always done straight to the phone so this works for me as long as I sync every few months.
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bruins6020 said:
Hey this is great but unfortunately I had my import interrupted part way through also and not all contacts came through. What did you do to clean up after you imported a 2nd time??
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Click to collapse
i shared the same fustration...
hahaha... all i did was... do the import process all over again
thus creating about 500 duplicates! what a pain!
luckily, the phone automatically links duplicate names...
it just gets really cluttered when you have gmail, fb, myspace, corporate, and phone entries...
the worst part is... the max each person can be linked is w/ 5 accounts...
so when i imported 1 and a half times, i had a few duplicate entries because it exceeded the 5 links/contact.
what a pain... i went through one by one to clean it up... im dooing a letter a day...
Hi,
Im using a Samsung I9000 and when Im saving a new contact the phone always asks where it have to be saved:
Phone
Sim Card
gmail account
youtube account
Im few new to android and I tough every contact on my phone is also on my gamil account is this right?
When Im selecting phone will this contac be synced with gmail or not?
Actually, you can choose to save your contact in one of several different "places". For instance, if you use Gmail for contact management, you would save your contacts to Google contact type.
However, there are many other information management applications and sites. Many people use Outlook or another computer based PIM application, and use that to sync contacts to the phone. These would be put in the Phone contact type.
Since you are using a GSM based phone, you can also save new contacts as a SIM contact type. Note that SIM contact types have some limitations compared to the others as far as how many phone numbers, email addresses, etc. can be saved per contact.
You say you are new to Android, but is this your first smart phone? In other words, how did you get your contacts on the phone in the first place, or are you just adding them now?
If this is your first smart phone and you are just adding the contacts, as long as you are ok with Google having all that information, then save them as a Google contact type. The point of that is so if you loose your phone, or it is damaged or otherwise, you still have the data backed up and can get it to another phone. In fact, if you are using Gmail to manage your contacts, just log into Gmail on a computer and enter all the contacts that way. It will be easier and faster and they will sync to your phone automatically.
Hi,
thank you very very much you helped me a lot!!!
This isnt my fist smart phon, before I had many many WM Phones and synced with outlook which I would prefer but as I bought my i9000 they told me it wont work and I ve to transfer my contacts to google to get them synced...
I think Ill switch back from that because I dont like to hafe google my contacs and if it works with outlook its much easier for me!
Thanks a lot
I have round 1,200 contacts on my exchange server
For quite a number of friends I saved only the first name. And this @&%^# contact app from Samsung joins all the people who have the same first name (When nop last name is saved). How convenient...
I "could" go trough all my contacts and split them. But it's slow. And every time I flash a new ROM and charge my contacts through exchange they get agregated again
Is there a settting somewhere where we can prevent the application from merging contacts ? Or if keeps on doing so, is it possible to have it save the fact you split the contacts somewhere on my exchnage account (So that it doesn't do it again the next time I reload everything...)
Or maybe some of you have already settled for another Contact manager app
It's super annoying
Anyone?
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dont know the answer but writing this to wish you luck i have 120 contacts and it was a real pain to put it in order 1200 contacts i cant imagine
Isn't it confusing anyway having multiple contacts with the exact same name? How do you know which is which?
I make sure all my contacts have either a last name, or some differentiating text at least.
There's no way to stop the app doing it automatically, the only options are to either clean up your contact entries at the GMail end, or use a different contacts app.
knightnz said:
Isn't it confusing anyway having multiple contacts with the exact same name? How do you know which is which?
I make sure all my contacts have either a last name, or some differentiating text at least.
There's no way to stop the app doing it automatically, the only options are to either clean up your contact entries at the GMail end, or use a different contacts app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use exchange but yeah I get what you mean by "clean up your contact entries at the GMail end"
How do I differentiate ? The good stuff with smartphone sis we can include pictures... Same first name different picture --> fastest way to differentiate for me. However the stupid app merges the contacts and put the pic of the first contact --> I am lost
Honestly, not having the option is a shame. That's a bad application. At the very least it should allow you to choose to merge automatically or not. At best it should leave you the choice of the aggregation key (Which filelds make a contact unique)
That sucks badly... very poor level of programming...
Actually i was wrong. This crappy piece of software also sometimes joins contacts that have a last name... I don't know what to say. I don't understand why there is no option to decide the key of oining contacts (Or simply disable it...)
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.
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I have moved contacts from SIM to phone, added contacts over time, and before changing phones, moved all contacts to the SIM creating duplicates. Some I think are from facebook and have no numbers. Some I have up to 5 duplicates.
In display options I have "Only contacts with phone numbers" unchecked with everything below also checked. A particular contact has 6 entries. A couple have numbers, most are empty and one facebook. When I select show only contacts with numbers I get 2. When I go to SIM management to export to SIM I see 6 again. There is no way to distinguish which has a number or any way to filter. All there is, is a checkbox and a name 6 times. I even merged the 5 of them and when I went to export to SIM I saw all of them separately again.
I can't write all 800+ to the SIM so how can I only transfer the ones with numbers attached??? The only way I can delete the contacts without numbers is to open the contact, see if it has a number and delete. I seriously don't want to do that 500 times.
Is there a smart way to write only the contacts with numbers to the SIM? I surely would appreciate the help!
Running 2.3.6
Why are you saving to sim card? Just manage them in contacts app and they sync with Google account between devices. There's an option in Google desktop contacts to merge duplicates.
BTW, sim contacts are stored as one contact per number. So a phone contact with 2 numbers will actually create 2 separate entries when exported to sim card.
I'm looking up Google Contacts and it has been discontinued. I found Google Desktop, but then started running across all these plug-in and fixes for different problems of mismatched databases...
I write them to the SIM so I can switch it another phone and have them all. It's just how I've been doing it since before any back-up capabilities. I suppose I need to open a new email account that doesn't have a couple of hundred email addresses to deal with and no phone numbers. Facebook contacts got copied as a name only because they were an entry I guess. No email address or anything.
I do need to find some way of merging all the duplicates. Do you have another suggestion that's not going to require me to read and dig up a discontinued program that I can continue to use? lol
I'm referring to the contacts in your Google (i.e. Gmail) account, certainly no discontinued and no plugin required, just log into it from a browser and go to the contacts tab. All of your contacts should be synced from your phone and you can find duplicates and merge there, which will then sync back to your phone.
Guess I'm making the assumption that you have a Gmail or Google apps account, which is almost a necessity with an Android device.
^ what he said. Its much easier to manage contacts in Gmail and have it sync over. If you change number or lost your phone no need to ask people for their number ever.
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I agree that it's easier to maintain it how you say.
That was nuts! I thought they were already synchronized with gmail, but I guess not. I went through and deleted what I wanted in gmail, then everything in my phone. I went to sync bac and it said it couldn't becuase of too many deleted contacts. I thought, yes, just delete them. Then I watched all my contacts disappear from my gmail account on my PC. Gmail has a cool feature to resore contacts as they were minute by minute. Eventually I got the whole list back and on my phone.
Thanks for the help! Saving them to the SIM is old school now...
I rooted my phone last night and thinking about installing ICS, the second leaked version UCLD2 because I'm not liking the lock screen on 2.3.6. I want to find a setup for my Skyrocket that people are liking, but that's kind of hard.... Hey, here's a great ROM. Camera is broken, WiFi has issues, screen gets stuck in wrong orientation... but it's great! Does't seem to be much out there for the Skyrocket. I was looking in the forum here under my correct phone type. Suggestions? I know, wrong thread, just asking a BTW...
ROM
check out skyrocket Android development for Listing of Roms. I'm using SKYICS
I think that's where I got the UCLD2. I don't like it at all. I don't know if apps don't work because they're not ready, of if it's this version of ICS. People say it sucks for the battery and it's because messaging sits there and uses 90 of the cpu even in my pocket and the phone gets hot for no reason. I'll look up yours. Thanks Raven
Just click menu and merge with google
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