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
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Hi everyone,
I've been searching for an app to do this but I haven't found one. I might write up one soon but I'm too busy, so today I found a relatively simple way to do it manually. Basically, this gets Facebook contact information, including email and phone numbers, of all your friends and copies them to your Gmail contacts. There are quite a few steps, but this is really something you have to do once. When this is all said and done, your Google contacts will have all the necessary information, and you don't have to worry about rejoining all the contacts if you lose the data (by flashing a new ROM, for instance).
Things this will not do:
1. Grab contact photos. There might be a way around that, but I'm not sure.
2. Link social media, like statuses and such. This is all STATIC information.
3. This only works on Galaxy S phones (I think). Other phones might be able to follow the same general procedure if they're able to import ALL facebook contact into the phonebook.
This assumes that all of your contacts on your phone are synced to your primary Gmail account.
So, here's the procedure.
1. Create a backup of your Google contacts, save them to your Desktop. You can do this by going to Gmail -> contacts -> Actions -> Export.
2. To be safe, you can export your phone's contacts as well, in case something goes wrong. To do this: Contact -> Menu -> Import/Export -> Export to SD.
3. Import ALL of your Facebook friends into your contacts. To do this: Menu-> Get friends -> Check all of them, then press Save. This part can take awhile, so be patient.
4. Export all of your contacts to your SD card again. Contacts -> Menu -> Import/Export -> Export to SD. This includes ALL your contacts, existing and facebook contacts, but the important part is that the Facebook contact information is included. The file will be named 0000x.vcf, where x is some number, and it should be located under /sdcard/external_sd.
5. Transfer that .vcf file to your computer. You'll need a file manager like Astro, and you can email the file to yourself.
6. In google contacts, create a group called "Original Contacts", and add all of your current contacts to that group.
7. Also, create another group called "Facebook" (or whatever).
8. In google contacts, import your .vcf file, which was exported from your phone. To import: Contacts -> Actions -> Import. Check the option "Add all contacts to this group:" and pick the group "Facebook".
9. When that's done, go to "My Contacts" -> Actions -> Find and merge duplicates. Check to be sure that the right contacts are being merged, then press OK. All of your existing contacts that have associated Facebook information will be merged.
10. Go to your "Original" contacts group, and remove the "Facebook" contact label from all of them.
11. Go to the "Facebook" group, select all of them contacts, and delete them.
12. Ta da!!! All of your original contacts now have Facebook information right in Google contacts, and data portability is no longer an issue! All the contacts you didn't care about are also gone as well!
13. This step is optional. By doing this, you might find that you'll get contacts that have duplicate entries for phone numbers. To fix this, you can export the "Original" contacts group as a CSV file, open it up in Excel, and quickly remove all the duplicate phone number entries. This is actually a very quick process - it took me about 2 minutes. Save that file, then go into Google and delete ALL of your contacts. Then, import that CSV file you just edited. Now, you have all of your contacts but all the duplicate data entries have been removed.
14. Clean up: you can delete the Facebook group and the 'Original' contact group, as those were just to keep things organized.
Photos are probably not preserved. They weren't for me - other people might have different results based on whether they perform the optional step or not.
I hope this helps everyone!
Hello.
I've got big problem which ate almost all my yesterday's free time.
Well, I have nandroid backup from may where I have correct(so called "Correct") contacts photos. Sadly when I restore it and sync with my Gmaill acccount it overwrite all Correct avatars these from Gmail.
What I want is to sync Correct contact photos from nandroid backup back to Gmail. I tryed a lot of different ways: delete contact on gmail, editing them on phone etc. None of them worked correctly. It's all the time overwriting Correct avatar.
Maybe there is any way that I can copy all contact photos so I can upload them on computer(it would take few minutes to do it)? If not what else I can do?
I hope you'll understand me.
You could:
1) restore the backup and reboot the phone without a sim card to prevent the automatic sync (or you could just be quick and disable your data connection right after the reboot)
2) save your contacts to sd card (there is an export/import option somewhere)
3) go to the google contacts website, delete all your contacts
4) delete all your contacts on the phone
5) import the contacts you saved to your google account with the google contacts website
But export contacts to SD Card doesn't export contact pictures, does it?
evolucja said:
But export contacts to SD Card doesn't export contact pictures, does it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure about this, sorry...
Did this procedure for other reasons a long time ago.
It doesn't, because it's exporting contacts to .csv file and when I tryed to open it on computer contacts didn't have pictures. After all the file is too small(about 230kb) to contain contact icons..
I'll print a picture and post it on the wall of person who would help me. Maybe someone knows where are contacts thumbnails stored in Android?
uninstalled various apps using titanium back-up and my phone account for contacts is gone. Only gmail account for contacts available now. All the stuff i deleted were ok to delete on froyo. Anyone has any idea which app causes that? Possible candidates are lg pc suite, email, richnote ,social and a few more. Since i need to reinstall the rom everytime it is a bit annoying to try and eliminate each and every one of them so i was wondering if anyone has pinpointed the problem so far. And no if i make a backup of the apps i uninstall with titanium back up and then restore it my phone account doesn't return...
I can't help with what apps may cause it but you might find it easier to go into the settings menu of your phone and go to the part of it showing your applications and look at the permissions required to see what apps need sms or contact related permissions.
I can say that you are able to back up phone contacts with Titanium Backup and restore them which should mean that even if an app uninstalls them you can simply restore the contacts from an sd card.
Haven't used Titanium for a while so had to look up how to backup contacts for you but apparently this should be all you need to do in order to backup your contacts with it (copied and pasted from another websites support pages so not my instructions)....
1 - Open Ti Backup
2 - Select the 'Backup/Restore' tab
3 - Select the 'menu' button to bring up some options in this tab
4 - Select 'Batch' (there a bunch of pre-programmed choices)
5 - Option 3 <RUN> 'Backup all user apps+system data'
6 - This will open another window where you can view all the items that are going to be backed up one of which is 'CONTACTS/CALLS' among a bunch of other items.
7 - Select 'Run Operation' at the top and the backup will start
8 - Be sure to copy the contents to your local machine HD for safe keeping
If that is done you shouldn't have a problem with contacts again, alternatively you can also sync contacts with gmail so your phone contacts can be restored that way as well.
Dave
for some strange reason lg pc sync caused it. when I uninstall it my phone contacts account is gone. Not sure if it is happening to me only though...
My contacts are in such a mess! I have them synced from google as well as the odd few from Exchange.
Google stopped syncing my contacts so I deleted the data from contacts storage which fixed that but now they are all merged or not existing.
I have removed google account and exchange but there are still contacts showing. I think these have been created internally from whatsapp which is annoying. Is there a way to delete all of these in bulk?
Or any other solutions to fix this?
First write correctly the title, seriously how people will know what is it about...
Then you have to solutions:
1st: sync all accounts you have then go to contacts > contacts to show > custom > select the one you want.
2nd: (this is what i do usually)
export all contacts on the phone
Backup the export
Delete all google contacts, everything on phone etc
Import them back in google contacts (https://www.google.com/contacts/)
search for duplicate in google contacts
rename them correctly
do the same with Exchange
Sync
clean the mess
delete useless contacts (like the pizza you ordered 4 years ago)
set up groups (like "i never phone them but i keep them in memory", "work", "favorite"
and then do the first solution to select the categories you want to show
The first 4 points are optionnal and if you do them PLEASE take care and be sure you have a BACKUP if you mess up everything
This will get your contacts clean and they will merge with all the differents accounts (like exchange+google+google plus+whatsapp etc)
Nikueltrasgu said:
First write correctly the title, seriously how people will know what is it about...
Then you have to solutions:
1st: sync all accounts you have then go to contacts > contacts to show > custom > select the one you want.
2nd: (this is what i do usually)
export all contacts on the phone
Backup the export
Delete all google contacts, everything on phone etc
Import them back in google contacts (https://www.google.com/contacts/)
search for duplicate in google contacts
rename them correctly
do the same with Exchange
Sync
clean the mess
delete useless contacts (like the pizza you ordered 4 years ago)
set up groups (like "i never phone them but i keep them in memory", "work", "favorite"
and then do the first solution to select the categories you want to show
The first 4 points are optionnal and if you do them PLEASE take care and be sure you have a BACKUP if you mess up everything
This will get your contacts clean and they will merge with all the differents accounts (like exchange+google+google plus+whatsapp etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks - that makes sense. The dialler still shows 2 contacts even though in people and google website it shows 1!
As for the title I've no idea what happened! I must have typed in a special character or something that removed my title! Apologies!
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