Develop Bugs

Messenger / Windows Live - Contacts sooo annoying!

Fellow xda people...
I'm a ms messenger addict, well I like it anyway and I've been looking forward to using it on my vario over uk T-mobile web'n'walk...I'm running black 2.5 so now I have the "windows live" thing on my today screen and I'm signed in...
thing is, seems to work...but i CANT STAND the way it insists on putting all my MSN contacts into my contact list! Does this annoy anyone else? Anyone found any clever work arounds?
Typical of microsoft trying to integrate an app and take over the whole machine - horrible?
cheers
bb

its so annoying...almost makes me want to use a different messenger client?

using black 2.0. cannot sign windows live from yesterday until now. it said no internet connectivity but i am connected with gprs and also wifi. can surf net also. it the mobile server different from the desktop?

I'm talking about the contacts in particular....

anyone else use messenger - windows live....polluting my contacts !

I had the same problem when I first used the live messenger beta a few months back. The final version does have the "sync contacts" optionality but as you say it still syncs them and creates duplicates and rubbish!
The only work around I found was to use outlook to copy and paste all the relevant info from the original contacts details into the new contacts created by messenger and then deleting the old one. This then avoids the duplication next time you flash and set up live.

unwired4 said:
The only work around I found was to use outlook to copy and paste all the relevant info from the original contacts details into the new contacts created by messenger and then deleting the old one. This then avoids the duplication next time you flash and set up live.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That seems to work the best for me, I don't have to many contact and it wasnt that hard for me to delete them all and put them back in again - when you do this it asks what sort of contact you want - I think MS should have included a wizard that goes through your contacts when you first install them asking if you want Outlook, Contacts List and/or Messenger for each contact.
Another problem I found was everytime it synced from phone to computer, it would change my Messenger contacts, I found that if you edit the contact in Windows Messenger and make sure the name info is the same as what is one the phone has stored, it solves this problem, my contacts sync OK now.

I have the same issue, so i just reverted to using Pocket MSN...

Someone posted a workaround in the following thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=1236933&postcount=22
Don't know if it's working since I didn't have time to install Live Messenger and try it out. Can someone try it?

My Workaround ...
Yeah,
I had the exact same problem. And i have HEAPS of contacts both messenger and outlook ... and of course ... i'm ridiculously anal about having everything exactly perfect ... so i fixed my contacts and reinstalled my phone ... hah
What i found worked for me, was before syncing the first time, make sure that you have outlook contacts corresponding to the email addresses of your messenger contacts. (ie: if windows live messenger sees you have an outlook contact with the same email address, it will just attach the msn display pic etc to that contact.
- Phixx

cheers for this...infuriating !
I have now taken the route one approach...deleted all the daft MS Messenger contacts and removed Windows Live from my today screen (I would delete it if I could)....Hope I never see it again!

The best way to deal with it is to make sure all of your contacts in MS Live have contact entries in Outlook. It sucks, but once you have all of your contacts sync'd up, it's pretty cool: you can see people's online status anywhere you see their contact info on the phone.

BTW; no matter what route you take, you MUST back up your Live contacts and your Outlook contacts on your PC. Seriously. Do it now. I made the mistake of not doing that, and during one of my many reloads, I somehow managed to wipe out my entire Outlook contacts list *and* my Windows Live contact list. It was not a fun day restoring that.
Go to Contacts->Save instant messenging contacts in Windows Live on your PC.

yeah, but i don't want my instant messenger stuff anywhere near my contacts...to me it's a separate app! (or it should be) MS trying to be too clever by half.

What would be nice is if it put the messenger emails in contacts under "emails" Ie personal / business and email catogries.
It really is quite annoying when sifting through the contact list to find a phone number and having to sift through 100's of mail addresses too.
Of course I do try to use the smart dialing but they still come up.
Just having to do these work arounds every reinstall / HR e.t.c is tedious at best.

LeoBadhan said:
I have the same issue, so i just reverted to using Pocket MSN...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I want to do the same thing, only I can't find the install for pocket MSN, the only one I could find was on the MS site where you have to pay for it.. it came with my TyTN so I don't want to pay MS another €15 for it!
Can you please provide me the install file? whether it is in PM or in the thread
Thanks alot man

I quite like the way it works.. It's a little bit annoying if you have contacts who have really messed up their details online so that it can't link them to a phone contact, but other than that I really like it.
It would be nice if there was an advanced sync option where you could somehow pair orphan people on MSN to people in contacts on the phone so that it was aware they were the same person.. but I'm not gonna complain too much.

or just give you an option to turn it off.

I'm having an absolute nightmare with this!
I really like the idea in concept and want it to work.
I deleted the contacts it added to my phone adress book cos it looked messy not realising that when I sync'd with my PC it would delete them all (85) from messenger!
So I started re adding my msn contacts being careful to also have a corresponding Outlook contact and all was going well. I was getting them linked up nicely. Now all of a sudden, they've all gone again from my MSN on my PC!
I want this feature to work, I don't simply want to turn it off as some of you have done. How should I go about this?

Yes, me too.. There are nice features in Live messenger for WM, like showing display picture, voiceclip, sending files, pictures, etc, but this contacts problem is so darn annoying! I wish some wizzguy could look into a hack or solution
Greetz.

Windows live messenger help

Hello,
Is there anyway to stop Windows Live Messenger contacts being added to your phone contacts. I have tried going to Windows Live, select 'menu' and go to 'Options > 2 Sync options' and disable the option for sync contacts, But then when I go to sign in to Live messenger it tells me that it will sync my contacts to my contact lists.
Thanks

Anyone got any ideas for this problem

Hello,
I ahad this problem...But, when you install window live messenger, it ask you : "Add your MSN's contact in your mobile's contact", remove it. (I hope that you understood!!)

I understand what you mean, splodger15. I think it's kind of stupid idea that we have to sync all fkin contacts to our phone. I tried to disable it but , as you said, it seems like no way to do that. I don't think I need all msn messenger's contacts on our phone 'cos I use Window Live Messenger just to chat with my friends. so I don't need all fkin 500+ emails to be on my phone. for this reason, I prefer Pocket MSN to WLM, though WLM has more features than PMSN.
let's see what I got....
- My phone is Dopod D810 with WM6 rom and I love it.
- I tried to delete a WLM contact on my phone while I had WLM online. it was totally gone so I had to add my friend back again.
- I tried again, had WLM offline, deleted all 500 emails, and online again. I got nothing on WLM's contact list but......a second later, all email had synced and appeared on my phone's contacts again.
- if you know anything new, please let me know. I would appreciate it.
Good luck and happy holidays..........

Windows live mobile lost my contacts list :S

:EDIT2:
Uppon searching means of getting them back i discovered windows live help forums and it appears alot of people have been having their contacts deleated and they can be retrived by a windows live employee adding them to your account again.
Thus i beleive this may have been coninsidence and not linked.
Thankyou anyway for reading.
:/EDIT2:
Hey, a while ago i set up msn on my phone and stupidly made it so that contacts emails where added to my adress book. This added something like 400 emauils that i really didn't want on my contacts list.
So i used a program to remove them all, this worked a charm. Now i go onto msn and i have 6 contacts on my phone, on my pc i ahve a full list. I tryed syncing to update them that didn;t work, i tryed even telling it to add emails to my addressbook to no avail.
Im a bit lost as too what to do, i cant even find windows live messenger on my remove programs list to reinstall it.
It is possible to have a contact list on windows live mobiel without having it saved onto your phone isn't it?
Thanks.
:EDIt:
now after trying sync to my pc i no longr have windows live messenger contacst either.

I think its about time I add something to the forum
Same thing happened to me, what i did was:
1. Log into messenger on your pc
2. Go to Options
3. Click on Privacy
4. Midway the screen you will see Contacts List and a button View. Click on view to see who has you on their list
5. You will see a list of all the contacts who have you and if you right click on them, you can add them to your contacts. Do this for all the contacts.
Only problem is, is that you will have to put them back into the category of your choice. But the ones who you have blocked will remain blocked
Hope this helps.
EDIT: oh and to prevent your email adds from adding to your contacts, re-setup your email address in windows live messenger on your mobile, and there should be an option of not syncing the contacts. I can't remember exactly what the option is called but its definitely there.

the_cool said:
I think its about time I add something to the forum
Same thing happened to me, what i did was:
1. Log into messenger on your pc
2. Go to Options
3. Click on Privacy
4. Midway the screen you will see Contacts List and a button View. Click on view to see who has you on their list
5. You will see a list of all the contacts who have you and if you right click on them, you can add them to your contacts. Do this for all the contacts.
Only problem is, is that you will have to put them back into the category of your choice. But the ones who you have blocked will remain blocked
Hope this helps.
EDIT: oh and to prevent your email adds from adding to your contacts, re-setup your email address in windows live messenger on your mobile, and there should be an option of not syncing the contacts. I can't remember exactly what the option is called but its definitely there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cheers mate that is alot quicker then the way windows live gave me! why the hell didn't tjhey tell me to do that!
But i also posted on the ocuk forums and some nice guy on their wrote me a lil program that takes the huge list of contacts and puts it into one file i can import in
Thanks though, if it wernt for the other guy writing me a lil program this would be a total life saver in comparison!
And yeah i wanted to reset up my email adress, the problem is it wont let me deleate it to start with...

I can help you with that too
1. Open Windows Messenger on your mobile
2. You should be on that main page which says sign in as and you can choose status. Click Cancel
3. Click Menu
4. Click Windows Live
5. Click Menu
6. Click Account Options
7. Click Switch Windows Live ID and press yes.
9. Choose Accept
10. Enter details for your account and click Next
11. Choose whether you want the search bar etc n press next
12. IMPORTANT: Uncheck "Store Windows Live contacts in you mobile phone's contact list". This will stop the contacts from going into your account again. Press Next
13. And there you go!
I don't mean to patronise you by adding every single step but for completions sake I thought I should as it can help someone in the future.
Let me know how you get on

cheers mate, not patronizing at all. Just being helpful.
Ill get back to you on how i do.

Backup Contacts

Hi I have a silly question: how do I backup the contacts from my phone onto my pc or internet?
I have acquired a lot of contacts post-getting the phone, and I want to backup my contacts before experimenting with it.
So, how do I backup all the phone numbers on my simcard, pc, or just the internet so i can retrieve it later?
I don't use outlook and stuff, but I don't mind using as long as someone cares to explain how.
thanks in advance

Hopefully there is some type of app or way through Zune. Don't have my phone yet but will let you know once I receive it.

Contacts should automatically be synced with Windows Live. Go to your windows live account on your pc and look at the contacts there to verify.

PG2G said:
Contacts should automatically be synced with Windows Live. Go to your windows live account on your pc and look at the contacts there to verify.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From windows live i can't see any phone numbers of people on my phone :/

How did you add the contacts, just import from SIM?

In my case it was done by Hotmail sync.

Yes. I imported from sim. how do i back up to sim now?
Or how do i do hotmail sync to backup?
when i got the phone i did this:
import from sim
add live account
add gmail account
add facebook
link everything as much as i could
but now i have more ppl's numbers, mostly just numbers no other linked accounts. how do i back these up to my simcard/phone/hotmail/whatever ?
cheers

Is your Windows Live (or some other account, like Google) setup to sync contacts?
I can't really say for sure, my process was a bit different than yours. I was waiting for the release date so I had everything already setup in Windows Live

Ahhh. I see. Nothing is synced to my windows live.
But even then, all i want to backup is phonebook/phone contacts to my sim. I don't care about anything else. Is it really that hard? Microsoft really thought it would be impossible anyone would ever have any reason to want to transfer their contacts from a one to another phone? wtf

ameel said:
Ahhh. I see. Nothing is synced to my windows live.
But even then, all i want to backup is phonebook/phone contacts to my sim. I don't care about anything else. Is it really that hard? Microsoft really thought it would be impossible anyone would ever have any reason to want to transfer their contacts from a one to another phone? wtf
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The cloud really has been perfect for handling contacts for me. For example, my phone was stolen a month or so ago, if the contacts were just on the sim they'd all be gone now. I had the phone replaced under insurance, added my Windows Live id, and all of my contacts were back within minutes.
I can't really think of a reason not to sync contacts to either Google or Windows Live nowadays. Let them handle your backup

PG2G said:
The cloud really has been perfect for handling contacts for me. For example, my phone was stolen a month or so ago, if the contacts were just on the sim they'd all be gone now. I had the phone replaced under insurance, added my Windows Live id, and all of my contacts were back within minutes.
I can't really think of a reason not to sync contacts to either Google or Windows Live nowadays. Let them handle your backup
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ok, I get that. Sounds really great, but how do I get my phonebook from my windows phone 7 on the cloud now? :/
As in how do you do it in the first place?

You did setup a Windows Live account, right?

PG2G said:
You did setup a Windows Live account, right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
im using the windows live account that i usually use for everything else on my phone, yes

ameel said:
im using the windows live account that i usually use for everything else on my phone, yes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hrm, not sure what else you'd need to do. You can try long pressing on Windows Live to force sync.
When you add a new contact on your phone, it should have automatically been added to Windows Live (mine gives me a selection between Windows Live and Google).

PG2G said:
Hrm, not sure what else you'd need to do. You can try long pressing on Windows Live to force sync.
When you add a new contact on your phone, it should have automatically been added to Windows Live (mine gives me a selection between Windows Live and Google).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when you say windows live, where exactly do you go on your computer/online to find your windows live contacts?

ameel said:
when you say windows live, where exactly do you go on your computer/online to find your windows live contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
www.live.com Hotmail -> Contacts

PG2G said:
Hrm, not sure what else you'd need to do. You can try long pressing on Windows Live to force sync.
When you add a new contact on your phone, it should have automatically been added to Windows Live (mine gives me a selection between Windows Live and Google).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
crap you WERE RIGHT!!! IT IS ON MY WINDOWS LIVE ACCOUNT >_< it's just the mobile phone contacts are separate!! when i clicked on someone i thought i would see their phone number, but i didnt. it was just seperate entry. haha! then again, i can link them from windows live.
cheers mate

No problem, glad that worked out Managing contacts on the web is real nice, there are some nice combine/clean up features for linking different accounts.

ameel said:
crap you WERE RIGHT!!! IT IS ON MY WINDOWS LIVE ACCOUNT >_< it's just the mobile phone contacts are separate!! when i clicked on someone i thought i would see their phone number, but i didnt. it was just seperate entry. haha! then again, i can link them from windows live.
cheers mate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can also merge contacts from windows live as you may find duplicates. it may take a bit but i suggest merging your contacts if they're duplicated. these changes will be visible on the phone as well.

The Gate Keeper said:
you can also merge contacts from windows live as you may find duplicates. it may take a bit but i suggest merging your contacts if they're duplicated. these changes will be visible on the phone as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yup i saw that!
cheers

[Q] My phone updates both Windows Live and Facebook

When I send a status message to Facebook from People Hub (and untick the Windows Live in People), it still sends the same status update to my Windows Live account and Messenger. Why?
SOLUTION:
I just remembered that this issue started to happen when I tied my Facebook chat to the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Messenger). Since the messenger syncs my Facebook chat (and also my status updates) with my Windows Live Messenger, the only way to solve this issue is to get rid of the connection to Facebook in your Windows Live account. Just tap your name in the Messenger and then tap "Show profile". From there, you can disconnect from Facebook.

Sorry,
But your post is useless and meaningless and nothing but detritus to the XDA community if you don't share your solution with us
Someone else may have the same problem as you, and search the forums for information and a possible answer.
If they're lucky sifting through the thousands of threads and posts they may find this thread you've started and think they've found a gold nugget, only to discover you were too lazy to share your solution
So please have a thought for others too
Garrickus

There you go (and all other members), I posted the solution. Sorry for my lazyness .

Halle said:
SOLUTION:
I just remembered that this issue started to happen when I tied my Facebook chat to the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 (Messenger). Since the messenger syncs my Facebook chat (and also my status updates) with my Windows Live Messenger, the only way to solve this issue is to get rid of the connection to Facebook in your Windows Live account. Just tap your name in the Messenger and then tap "Show profile". From there, you can disconnect from Facebook.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need to disconnect Facebook. You can just uncheck the following
Share my Facebook status and updates with my Messenger friends
Click to expand...
Click to collapse