Database Info

[Q] Contacts Management & Duplicates

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.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I727 using xda premium

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
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I777 using XDA

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

[Q] Merging contacts from Phone, Facebook, Google, etc into 1 single contact on phone

I'm trying to figure out how I can reliably merge all the duplicate contacts I have to a single contact on the phone. What I'm trying to achieve is to be able to have:
1) 1 Single contact per person (not "linked" or "joined" but one single contact)
2) combine replace the older pictures with newer ones
3) Pull Facebook ID for use with Contacts-sync (so I can get 720x720 contact pictures instead of whatever the facebook app pulls)
Example: If i have 4 Joe Smith contacts (1 on the phone, one from facebook [i know, it's not editable], one from google, and one from contacts sync), I want to be able merge them all so that there is only 1 Joe Smith contact that has all the information from all 4 contacts so I can unsync facebook and google out of it.
I want to be able to pull the facebook ID number for the contacts so it can resync the picture as needed as well as reduce the clutter that I have.
Why? Facebook's current concept in syncing "existing contacts" seem to be the same thing as sync ALL contacts. It downloads ALL my friends info from Facebook and puts it in there but hides it. I'd prefer to be able to just get info for those people who is on my phone contacts and no one else.
I also want less syncing happening on my phone. As of this posting, Facebook still downloads low res pictures and ignores its own sync rules.
Does anyone here have any suggestions as what I can do to merge the info I need so I can unlink Facebook and just have contacts-sync pull the photos instead?
Thanks!
P.S: for those who are using the XDA app and can't see my signature, this is on the Samsung Galaxy S3 i9300 (International) phone.

[Q] Att Edge makes duplicate contacts when synced with Google contacts

Help, my att Note Edge creates multiple duplicate contacts when it syncs with my Google Contact account (my phone's contacts list shows 2,500 contacts
where as my google contacts shows only 280 contacts - which is the correct number of contacts). Also I get a notification message saying that Sync was
unsuccessful because "Too many Contacts deleted. There are 1019 deleted items for Contacts, account ....... @gmail.com. What do you want to do?" Do any
of you have a fix for this problem? thanks

I only know how to manually link them. Open one and look for the chain link you're icon, it will suggest similar name's you check them and click done and they're then all grouped. Kind of a pain you have to do each one but it's effective for multiple contracts.

Contacts app missing features on S9/S9+ compared to older phones

On all my previous devices, from an Android 4 tablet to a Samsung Galaxy S6, the Contacts app had a neat feature that allowed you to choose which contacts to display (in Contacts, Phone, and make accessible to any other app with access to contacts list).
You could choose between:
all contacts
contacts from a specific account (choose from Phone, SIM, gmail account, etc)
custom list (checklist from multiple accounts and groups defined within each account)
S9/S9+ Contacts app simply shows you all contacts from all accounts, with no option to narrow down the selection.
In the Contacts app (only) you can have it display contacts from one account, or one group from an account.
However all apps that have access to contacts see and use all contacts from all accounts, regardless. That includes Phone app, ofcourse (the only option in Phone is to display all or contacts with phone nr. only).
I had great use of that feature because I had it use only contacts from specific groups.
Now I have a lot of clutter.
Samsung official response was: that feature was intentionally removed from Contacts app.
I couldn't find many viable alternatives on Play store, I tried a few, mostly bloatware, apparently. Also, Google Contacts, while still having some sort of filtering builtin, can't seem to integrate it properly.
I am looking for a way to regain that level of filtering what contacts to use, without rooting the phone (I got it from work and could get into a lot of trouble if I root it).
Thank you.

Its still there if this what you mean

mjrshark said:
Its still there if this what you mean
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, that is not it.
That is only a display selection in Contacts app only. You can choose to display one account or one group, but no multiple selection of accounts/groups.
Furthermore, this has no effect on the contacts exported to all apps, including Phone. Phone will still show you the entire list of contacts, regardless of what you are looking at in Contacts app.

The following were taken from a Huawei P7 I still have, they illustrate what I also had in older and newer (at least S6):
Open contacts app (or via Phone->contacts).
Open menu
Choose "Contacts to display".
S9 contacts only allow you to limit displayed contacts to those with phone number.
What is missing is the selection of a single account and customize (bottom)
In this screen I selected one entire account (phone) and only one group from the gmail account:
Only these contacts will be visible (on Huawei P7, Samsung S6 and others) in Phone app, SMS app, etc.
Samsunt S9 shows all contacts from all accounts in Phone app, SMS app, etc.

So how to re add this option on new S9 10 ? someone found a solution ?