I emailed HTC on a few issues so I could get answers straight from them. I'll put them down point by answered point.
Q1. When syncing with your Google account, is it possible to sync with "My Contacts" without syncing with "All Contacts"?
A1. It is not possible to sync just 'My Contacts', it would always be 'Google Contacts, or 'All Contacts'.
(This I already found out from them as it syncs All Contacts first before syncing subgroups. And My Contacts is essentially a subgroup of All Contacts.)
Q2. Is there any way of saving contact vCard (that have been sent to you) to your synced (in my case Google) account? When you are sent a vCal, you have options of where to save it, but no options seem to appear for vCard contact files.
A2. vCards can only be saved as 'My Contacts', they cannit be moved over to 'Google Contacts'. I'm afraid it is not something there is an option for.
Q3. Is there any way of copying/moving a contact saved only on the phone to the set of contacts synced with your Google account? i.e similar to copying/moving from sim to phone, but copying/moving from only on the phone to phone and Google account.
A3. Like in point 2., I'm afraid you cannot change the type of contact once it has been saved, i.e, a Google Contact is always a Google contact, and can't be moved over to My contacts.
Q4. I have noticed that I if I change a birthday for a contact on the phone, the change is always reset to the information held online. Also, I've noticed that if I create a contact on the phone that contains birthday information, that contact will be deleted when the phone syncs. However changing a birthday online will sync to the phone just fine. Am I doing something wrong?
A4. The calender information held online has precedence over the information held on the phone. So if you create a contact with calender information contained within it, when it syncs, the calender information is reomved...as well as the contact information attached. But no, you're not doing anything wrong.
Q5. Regarding the calendar, I have noticed that the Desire will not receive vCal sent via SMS. I am using the same sim card as was in my previous device where I could receive vCal through SMS as well as MMS. Is this a feature of the phone, a setting that I have missed or is the ability to receive vCal via SMS not present?
A5. With regards to vCal, its the latter I'm afraid-vCal cannot be received via SMS, only MMS, Bluetooth or email.
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The only one's that bother me are points 2, 3 and 4. I think we definitely need a way to save contacts sent to us to our synced accounts.
But I don't really get the syncing issue. Maybe he didn't answer my question properly because if you create a contact on the phone without a birthday, it will sync just fine.
The birthday issue is relatively minor. The saving to synced contacts, not so minor.
not convinced by any of those answers whatsoever!
However, not got one at the moment to debunk them.
Mine should arrive tomorrow or the day after, and then i shall be back to prove these answers as wrong, or as a fault in the phone!
Are these really HTC Contact app limitation ... or Google Android limitation related to Google GMail Contacts?
What if we change the contact app to something else from the Market?
Cleargrey said:
I emailed HTC on a few issues so I could get answers straight from them. I'll put them down point by answered point.
Q1. When syncing with your Google account, is it possible to sync with "My Contacts" without syncing with "All Contacts"?
A1. It is not possible to sync just 'My Contacts', it would always be 'Google Contacts, or 'All Contacts'.
(This I already found out from them as it syncs All Contacts first before syncing subgroups. And My Contacts is essentially a subgroup of All Contacts.)
Q2. Is there any way of saving contact vCard (that have been sent to you) to your synced (in my case Google) account? When you are sent a vCal, you have options of where to save it, but no options seem to appear for vCard contact files.
A2. vCards can only be saved as 'My Contacts', they cannit be moved over to 'Google Contacts'. I'm afraid it is not something there is an option for.
Q3. Is there any way of copying/moving a contact saved only on the phone to the set of contacts synced with your Google account? i.e similar to copying/moving from sim to phone, but copying/moving from only on the phone to phone and Google account.
A3. Like in point 2., I'm afraid you cannot change the type of contact once it has been saved, i.e, a Google Contact is always a Google contact, and can't be moved over to My contacts.
Q4. I have noticed that I if I change a birthday for a contact on the phone, the change is always reset to the information held online. Also, I've noticed that if I create a contact on the phone that contains birthday information, that contact will be deleted when the phone syncs. However changing a birthday online will sync to the phone just fine. Am I doing something wrong?
A4. The calender information held online has precedence over the information held on the phone. So if you create a contact with calender information contained within it, when it syncs, the calender information is reomved...as well as the contact information attached. But no, you're not doing anything wrong.
Q5. Regarding the calendar, I have noticed that the Desire will not receive vCal sent via SMS. I am using the same sim card as was in my previous device where I could receive vCal through SMS as well as MMS. Is this a feature of the phone, a setting that I have missed or is the ability to receive vCal via SMS not present?
A5. With regards to vCal, its the latter I'm afraid-vCal cannot be received via SMS, only MMS, Bluetooth or email.
------------------------------------
The only one's that bother me are points 2, 3 and 4. I think we definitely need a way to save contacts sent to us to our synced accounts.
But I don't really get the syncing issue. Maybe he didn't answer my question properly because if you create a contact on the phone without a birthday, it will sync just fine.
The birthday issue is relatively minor. The saving to synced contacts, not so minor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i have a question regarding point 4
does this mean the whole contact gets deleted or just the calendar entry ?
rhedgehog said:
not convinced by any of those answers whatsoever!
However, not got one at the moment to debunk them.
Mine should arrive tomorrow or the day after, and then i shall be back to prove these answers as wrong, or as a fault in the phone!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll be waiting! I could do chow down on some more info!
Thanks for the info!
The thing I don't get is this:
A1. It is not possible to sync just 'My Contacts', it would always be 'Google Contacts, or 'All Contacts'.
How can that not be a MAJOR problem?! I got hundreds of mail addresses in there of people I ever wrote to. If they would show up on my phone, that would make the whole sync feature useless.
Or am I missing something?
no entropy, you're not missing anything, it's a major issue to me!
I really hate to have ALL the contacts I wrote to or received a mail from, even for just one time only.
A little work-around is to check the contact option which says something like "only show contacts with telephone number", but it works in Phone contacts only: if you, from the menu, click on search contacts and look for something it will show up with EVERY contact you got in touch on gmail.
It really pisses me off
I am only importing My Contacts on my phone. I don't know how I did it, but I have My Contacts with a few groups,(about 60 contacts) and then I have All Contacts, with over 200 people. None of these show up on my phone...
zonkkk said:
I am only importing My Contacts on my phone. I don't know how I did it, but I have My Contacts with a few groups,(about 60 contacts) and then I have All Contacts, with over 200 people. None of these show up on my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That would be interesting to know!
Are you sure they are not showing just because, maybe, you checked "only show contacts with telephone number"?
Will you test ti by going on the main menu, and click "search contacts" and see you EVERY contact (mail only ones too I mean) shows up?
Thnx
zonkkk said:
I am only importing My Contacts on my phone. I don't know how I did it, but I have My Contacts with a few groups,(about 60 contacts) and then I have All Contacts, with over 200 people. None of these show up on my phone...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
JapanLover said:
That would be interesting to know!
Are you sure they are not showing just because, maybe, you checked "only show contacts with telephone number"?
Will you test ti by going on the main menu, and click "search contacts" and see you EVERY contact (mail only ones too I mean) shows up?
Thnx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been a bit troubled by contacts over the past couple of days and been spending a lot of time getting them sorted. All working pretty peachy now but it was a trial.
If may help to read my posts here and here.
goin' home, but will DEFINITELY check your posts!!!
Oh: since you look experienced on GContacts... any clues on progs to sync Outlook other than the good Go Contacts Sync? it works well, but it doesn't updates pics
Haha! Mine arrived this morning while i was at work so took the opportunity to pick it up from home on my lunch break!!
right here we go.
1) bollocks....kinda. It will sync those auto contacts, but you can hide them.
In people, press menu, view.
untick the box next to 'show google auto contacts'
2) bollocks. When you select to import from the SD card, it asks you which account you want to create the contacts under. just select google.
3) bollocks. See answer 2. Export contacts from phone to SD card. Delete copies on phone, import from sd card to google account.
4) i'm still looking at this but i suspect it is linked to facebook. I think it only downloads from facebook and so that overwrites what you put in. if you log out of facebook for HHTC Sense, i suspect the value you put in would appear.
5) this appears to be correct.
However, i happen to know from sources that they didn't have any desire handsets until recently, so don't be too hard on them.
thought, probably just removing the link from a contact to facebook might prove the birthday thing....trying now
Yup, that seems to be it.
When a contact is linked to facebook, you'll see a facebook logo next to their birthday in the contact view (assuming they have put their birthday in)when you actually edit that contact, no birthday is actually saved in the contact.
So it seems that data synced from facebook takes precedence over the local data.
I'll give them bollocks on number 4 because nothing is being deleted at all, and the calendar data seems to be getting synched to google, it's just that the phone will display the facebook data and not the local data.
so that appears to be 4 bollocks out of 5.
And a MAJOR annoyance for me is people tthat have their phone numbers on facebook as just 44xxxxxxx rather than +44xxxxxx or 07xxxxxx meaning you cant send them a text as it fails without the initial + and you can't edit the number as its pulled from facebook.
I have had to unlink several contacts for this reason to get my correct 'local' data to be used insted.
rhedgehog said:
Yup, that seems to be it.
When a contact is linked to facebook, you'll see a facebook logo next to their birthday in the contact view (assuming they have put their birthday in)when you actually edit that contact, no birthday is actually saved in the contact.
So it seems that data synced from facebook takes precedence over the local data.
I'll give them bollocks on number 4 because nothing is being deleted at all, and the calendar data seems to be getting synched to google, it's just that the phone will display the facebook data and not the local data.
so that appears to be 4 bollocks out of 5.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol Thanks for that. Firstly, glad you finally have you Desire! The SD card route will have to do for the contacts.
As for the facebook thing, well, I haven't signed in to any facebook account yet as experience has told me to get one set of contacts in working order, and back it up before trying to sync it with another account/system. And still, when I update a birthday on my phone, it won't sync to my Google account. It's not a major thing but it is a minor irritation.
I just did another test of inputting a new test contact into my phone with a birthday (01/02/70) and the contact was deleted on syncing with my Google account. Go figure.
Oh, and it wasn't all bolx! They were half right that you can't directly save a vCard to your Google account. At least give them a one testicle redemption!
ok just to get this straight. it deletes contacts if they have calendar info in them ?
so how do you add new contacts ? first without calendar info, then sync and then go to your google account and change calendar ?
thats just strange and bad
does this only occur for contacts with calendar info in them , or are there other places where this occurs ?
TulpiX said:
ok just to get this straight. it deletes contacts if they have calendar info in them ?
so how do you add new contacts ? first without calendar info, then sync and then go to your google account and change calendar ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me, yes. Try it, let me know what happens when you sync up a new contact with a birthday from your phone to your Google account. Or change the birthday of a contact already synced on your phone and let us know if it changes it in your Google account.
just tried it on mine, on a google contact that was not linked to a facebook account.
The phone shows the birthday no problem, but it does not seem to have synched that up to the google account, even after forcing the sync two or three times....
very odd.
I'm experiencing the same exact problem, new contacts simple get deleted.
Hi folks,
couple of questions around contacts.. both my wife and i now have the desire.. she just couldnt keep her hands off mine so i bought her one over the weekend..
She's keen to have her contacts in one place, set up calendar events for birthday etc.. Is that best done in gmail and then sync with the phone?
Also why can i see my facebook picture in messages (and can i get rid of it?) but i cant see my wifes when i get a message from her?
How do you get the contacts from the phone book into gmail?
Cheers,
Mick
It took me a while to figure out that there are 3 types of contacts
- phone
- google contacts
- facebook
Your phone contacts do not synchronize by default.
Google contacts are synchronized with your Gmail contacts (both ways).
Facebook contacts don't need an explanation
You can create all 3 types for one person and then link them (although you may experience some inconsistencies) so you will have one entry per person.
I myself have all the contacts saved as google contacts and I can manage them either in Desire or via my Gmail account.
so if you have phone contacts.. can you export them to google contacts?
micks_address said:
so if you have phone contacts.. can you export them to google contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you can. I exported my Phone contacts to the SDcard and imported them to my Gmail account.
Thanks - and in gmail then can you set up birthdays etc.. and the phone will then pop up reminders?
cheers for your help
mick
ferus said:
Yes, you can. I exported my Phone contacts to the SDcard and imported them to my Gmail account.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you can manage your contacts via Gmail and sync them to your phone.
And about the birthday reminders - they do pop up (sort of).
I don't find the birthday notifications good enough. The phone reminds you 7 days in advance (which is too soon in my opinion) and only by showing you a little green sign in your phonebook. No sound, no vibration... nada.
I ended up creating an appointment for all my main contacts (using Google calendar, so it wasn't that big of a deal) so I would not forget them.
cheers - it would be nice alright if it would give you a pop up for appointments.. i guess the calendar is the way to go.. with gmail - can you set up appointments there.. and sync them with your phone? or do you use the phones calendar to set up appointments?
thanks,
mick
The synchronization works both ways. You can add/remove appointments on your Desire and they will be added/removed to your Google calendar (and vice versa).
EDIT: Desire can also show all your shared calendars as well (with corresponding colours). For example my wife shares her calendar with me (so I don't have to ask for the millionth time when some of her appointments are due) and I can see her entries marked in a different colour in my Desire's calendar.
The calendar sharing must be done from Google Calendar itself.
As for the notifications... I was trying to find an application which would extract birthdays from your contacts and either set them as appointments automatically or manage the reminders from the app. Unfortunately I was not able to find a working one.
My Favorite is using Google Contact method. So our contact will auto Sync with Google.. this is seamless backup solutions for me
Just bought my Desire
I wanted to start out clean, so I wiped out my Google contacts and calender.
Now I'd like to pull all of my FB friends to the phone and to Google Contacts, including birthdays into calender.
I've set up the sync to FB, and when going to People -> Online Directories -> FB I can see all of my FB friends, and can even call which ever of them has a phone number available on he's details, but for every contact who's details I want to see, the phone has to connect to the internet to retrieve that information, meaning it's not stored locally on the phone. Also, there are no contacts at People -> All.
Also, birthdays now appear on the phone's calender, but after syncing the phone calender with Google calender, I don't see any of that on there, meaning it doesn't sync ...
Another glitch is that although birthdays now all appear on the phone's calender, events which I have marked as attending on FB don't appear at all on the phone's calender.
Basically what I'd like is to copy all of my FB friends to my phone's memory as well as to Google contacts, and keep them linked and auto-synced.
Also to have all the birthdays that I already have on my phone's calender appear on my Google calender automatically, as well as FB events.
Is that too much to ask? :-X
Help would be much appreaciated...
So no ideas how to get it done... ?
Solution for birthday notifications
Go to a contact (any contact) and then go to the events tab (with the circle arrows). Press menu, go into settings, and there is your holy grail.
How does that help ... ? :-X
I'm not sure how this could've happened, but here's the deal:
Under the majority of my contacts, there are SEVERAL profiles merged together. These profiles all have the EXACT same information. This makes texting almost like a scavenger hunt.
For example: I want to text "andrew", so I type in "andrew" in the To: field, and a popup comes up with:
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
etc etc
Andrew A 777-777-7777
Andrew A 777-777-7777
Andrew A 777-777-7777
etc.
Andrew B 888-888-8888
Andrew B 888-888-8888
Andrew B 888-888-8888
etc.
I've tried deleting all contacts but as soon as it syncs with google, the problem re-arises. I've looked through my google contacts (through gmail) but there's no repeats! So really, i have no idea what the issue is, but would love to resolve it asap.
Thanks in advance.
EDIT: I should note that I "deleted" all contacts by going to settings -> applications -> manage -> all -> and clearing data from contacts and contacts storage
Do you also synch with your PC? Have you had to replace your phone recently? I had this happen when I did my first sync to the PC after getting a new phone. I had to remove all the duplicates on the PC to stop it from duplicating on the phone.
My other thought is it may be your friends from Facebook. Do you have Facebook set up on your phone? If they have phone numbers in their Facebook profile the phone will add them.
Finally, if neither of these apply I would do into each duplicate contact and find out where the phone says it is coming from. For example, if the contact info was synced from your Gmail account it will say Gmail under the name. If it was manually entered into the phone and/or synched from your PC it will say Phone under the name. If it was pushed to the phone from an Exchange mail account it will say Exchange under it. Maybe tracking down where the duplicates are coming from will help you get it resolved.
I had the same issue so I went to menu>accounts & sync and made sure I only had one profile syncing contacts. After that I went through and deleted all contacts. Then go to gmail(if you created a gmail account for your phone) and pull up the contacts section. Go through and delete/merge your contacts. Then go back to menu>accounts and sync, and sync your gmail contacts after the modification.
mdixon4az said:
Do you also synch with your PC? Have you had to replace your phone recently? I had this happen when I did my first sync to the PC after getting a new phone. I had to remove all the duplicates on the PC to stop it from duplicating on the phone.
My other thought is it may be your friends from Facebook. Do you have Facebook set up on your phone? If they have phone numbers in their Facebook profile the phone will add them.
Finally, if neither of these apply I would do into each duplicate contact and find out where the phone says it is coming from. For example, if the contact info was synced from your Gmail account it will say Gmail under the name. If it was manually entered into the phone and/or synched from your PC it will say Phone under the name. If it was pushed to the phone from an Exchange mail account it will say Exchange under it. Maybe tracking down where the duplicates are coming from will help you get it resolved.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have never synced with my PC, but this IS on a new ROM. I didn't ahve this issue on the old ROM. Also, these are all gmail contacts. I checked my gmail contact list, and there's no duplicates.
ryandoubleu said:
I had the same issue so I went to menu>accounts & sync and made sure I only had one profile syncing contacts. After that I went through and deleted all contacts. Then go to gmail(if you created a gmail account for your phone) and pull up the contacts section. Go through and delete/merge your contacts. Then go back to menu>accounts and sync, and sync your gmail contacts after the modification.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have two profiles that sync on my phone: facebook and google. Manually deleting the contacts would take forever, and I'm not sure if that would fix the problem, considering that deleting contact data previously didn't.
Also, as stated previously, I checked my contacts list through gmail and there were no duplicates.
I think this problem stems from myself accidentally hitting "import all" when choosing which vcf file to import. I've made several over the course of the last half year, so that may be the reason.
Another interesting thing I've noticed: If I manually delete a bunch of duplicated on my phone, the numbers STILL show up when I'm entering a name into the "To:" section. So I'm down to just one "Andrew 555-555-5555" in my contacts app, but when I type in Andrew to send him a text I still get:
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
Andrew 555-555-5555
etc.
It may seem that way...
You may want to drop the facebook contacts, it doesnt add anything except a picture maybe a phone number if the person entered it and email address.
I know deleting your contacts sounds like a pain on the phone but just do all of them. when you log onto Gmail it has some simple tools that make a large task take about 5 minutes. I had 500 contacts on my gmail contacts and it took me less than 5 minutes to compress it to 150.
OK so here is my problem. I got my phone and was very excited. I started it up and set up my google account (not actually knowing that it was not the sense delivered one). Ok all is fine there... but I wanted to use the HTC Sense email client with m.google.com exchange service.
So I went and stopped the syncing from google. I then went and created a m.google.com exchange account and am getting my mail just fine... but now when I go into the people tab everything appears fine, but when I click on a contact I see 2 of almost everything. I unchecked see google contacts. But when you open it apparently already "linked" the google contact with the excahgne contact.
So, my question after all this is how do I clear all the google contacts and leave the exchange server contacts? will it take a reset? I would prefer not to have to do that.
Thanks in advance for any help.
SoBBie
Well from the response I guess I will have to go with a reset.
Oh well. If someone does know a way please let me know.
Thanks,
SoBBiE
Sent from my HTC Incredible.
Log into your gmail account, click on contacts. You should be able to delete them from there and it should remove them from your phone for you.
OK thanks for that. but the problem there is my Exchange is with Google.... and my google is with google.
So I exported all my contact both the google and the exchange (even though they are the same) to my SD card. I also exported them from google to a CVS file.
So I went into google contacts and deleted all of my contacts. I then went to my phone and did a "Sync" for my exchange and my google account. This removed all my contacts except facebook... GREAT. half way there.
Know I imported only my exchange contact back to my exchange account. Even better if linked my facebook and I see all my contacts (With Pictures) in people.
BUT here is the bad part. when I do a sync with Exchange all my contacts disappear again. What is going on? can I not update my contact from my phone to my exchange (remeber this is google exchange m.google.com).
Please give me some direction. I know that I can import the CVS file in google and only sync with exchange but I will loose all the pictures (250 contacts and almost everyone has a image even BW3's gets a food image ).
I dont want ot have to manually add all those pictures back. and the import on the phone seemed to work great. but it is not pushing the contacts out to google. Any advice would be great.
Kind Regards,
SoBBie
OK so I did the entire process again and it seem to take. I know see my contacts out on google.
Thanks for you help.
SoBBie