Develop Bugs

Birthday reminders in the calendar

I must say that I love my Desire (have had it for about a week), except for some small kinks and I'm not the big fan of the HTC Sense lock-screen (I don't like the vertical "handle", I would much prefer the default Android one.. [any tips to get it is welcome]).
But there is one thing that annoys me, and I don't understand why they didn't implement. And that is birthday "reminders" in the calendar..
I like the HTC Calendar and I "love" the integration between Google Contacts (& Calendar), the phone and Facebook... For me (as a developer) it couldn't be much more work to integrate that into that calendar as well (the data is already there, you just have to show it [more or less..]).
Anybody know if there's a way to "fix" this (a setting I've missed) or a better calendar app that can handle this?
I know that you can include birthday info in your Google Calender from your Google contacts, but that's not "good enough". For one thing, I don't have all my friends (that I have on Facebook) in my Google Contacts and I have no intention to add them to it (or go through them and add their birthdays..)
I'm glad for any input..
All the best to you..
/Chris
(I used "Google [Service]" to be clear on what I was talking about)

I have the same problem. How do i make my device remimd me of my contacts b-day?
thanl you
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

You have to do it via Google.
First you have to sync your contacts with your Google contacts. The birthday and anniversary details will be carried up to your Google contacts from your phone.
Then switch to your Google calendar. On the left hand side in the Other calendars section, click "Add", select "Browse Interesting Calendars" and click the "More" tab. From the displayed list click the "subscribe" link against "Contacts' birthdays and events."
This adds your contacts' birthdays to your Google Calendar, which when sync'd with your phone will appear on you phone's calendar.
I admit this is not straightforward and I would have liked to have seen the phone do this by itself.

And what can we do with the contacts stored on the phone and no as a gmail contact?
Thanks!

meson1 said:
You have to do it via Google.
First you have to sync your contacts with your Google contacts. The birthday and anniversary details will be carried up to your Google contacts from your phone.
Then switch to your Google calendar. On the left hand side in the Other calendars section, click "Add", select "Browse Interesting Calendars" and click the "More" tab. From the displayed list click the "subscribe" link against "Contacts' birthdays and events."
This adds your contacts' birthdays to your Google Calendar, which when sync'd with your phone will appear on you phone's calendar.
I admit this is not straightforward and I would have liked to have seen the phone do this by itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonder if someone could help me with this. I had this all setup and it showed my birthdays fine.
Then I added a couple more birthdays to contacts and they didnt show even after syncing rebooting an taking off the calendar and putting it back on.
Now I cannot at all get the calendar to show ANY birthdays. Ive got it all set up right, and i;ve syncd. They show on the google calendar on the laptop here, it shows all tasks and birthdays, however the calendar on the phone doesnt show anything other than uk holidays. Ive messed with every setting possible...HELP!

Julian1984 said:
And what can we do with the contacts stored on the phone and not as a gmail contact?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On your phone you have three types of contacts: SIM contacts, Phone contacts and Google. Obviously, SIM contacts reside on your SIM card; Phone contacts in the phone and Google contacts on Google Mail.
As you have pointed out only Google contacts will synchronize with your Google Mail account. But all is not lost. You won't have to type in all your contact details again because you can link contacts together in the phone.
What you do is to create Google contacts that duplicate each of your phone contacts. Just create each Google contact on your phone with the same name as each existing phone contact. You do not need to include any details, just create them as empty contacts. Once you've done this, they will appear as two separate contacts in the contact list.
Now the magic. For each person, edit either one of their two contacts. You will see that you can link each contact with another contact. If you've used the same name for your Phone and Google contacts it will already be suggesting that these two can be linked together. So link them.
Now you will find your two linked contacts now appear as one in your contact list. And these linked contacts will now synchronize with your Google Mail account contacts and carry all the details from your original Phone contact with them.
Hope this helps.

eboBirthday from the Marketplace. Free.

kevano22 said:
Then I added a couple more birthdays to contacts and they didnt show even after syncing rebooting an taking off the calendar and putting it back on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this too. Only birthdays that were assigned to contacts at the time I created the calendar online show now.
I'm going to try and delete that calendar and re-create it but something is definitely wrong when you subsequently add birthdays after making that calendar.

Right, one thing I've found is that the birthdays I've added on the phone have NOT made their way back into Google's cloud. I've re-entered them in GMail online and re-created the calendar to show birthdays but they still aren't showing, not online and not in my phone!

Right, just re-added the calendar again online and it's now showing in the web calendar. After a refresh of the calendar on the phone, it's now showing there too.
So numerous bugs. If you want to see your birthdays, the process seems to be:
1) Enter them all online in your Gmail contacts
2) Delete then recreate your "friends birthdays" calendar in Google Calendar online
3) Refresh your phone
If you add any new birthdays, you'll need to do this all again. Pretty poor

tifosi256 said:
Right, just re-added the calendar again online and it's now showing in the web calendar. After a refresh of the calendar on the phone, it's now showing there too.
So numerous bugs. If you want to see your birthdays, the process seems to be:
1) Enter them all online in your Gmail contacts
2) Delete then recreate your "friends birthdays" calendar in Google Calendar online
3) Refresh your phone
If you add any new birthdays, you'll need to do this all again. Pretty poor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sounds like a horror story - here was i thinking that someone would have written an app to read birthdays from built-in phone contacts ... :-(

mrdo said:
sounds like a horror story - here was i thinking that someone would have written an app to read birthdays from built-in phone contacts ... :-(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.

tifosi256 said:
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks tif I will try it later. Got that birthday program and its cool but I'd like to see them in my calendar too!

tifosi256 said:
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it takes about 12-18 hour until birthdays are synched with my calendar, but only when i refresh the calendar manually (menu -> more -> refresh)
Try to add a birthday @ google contacts, wait 24 hours, refresh the calendar.
The only way it works for me.
When i add a birthday to a contact (when creating the contact), the contact disappers lol.

@meson1: I thank you for your post, and I guess it could be helpsome for someone but as I said in the original post. I know that you can do that, bit I don't want that.. Don't want to go through and manually add a hundred people to my Google contacts.. First there are already too many posts in there, second: too much work for too litle result and för something that more or less should be given..
I will check out that app. But I'm still looking för a good solution to this problem.. (anybody know if there's än API för the calendar?)
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

ChaosOfChris said:
@meson1: I thank you for your post, and I guess it could be helpsome for someone but as I said in the original post. I know that you can do that, bit I don't want that.. Don't want to go through and manually add a hundred people to my Google contacts.. First there are already too many posts in there, second: too much work for too litle result and för something that more or less should be given.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm afraid I don't know a way to do this for all your contacts enmasse. My experience with this stuff is limited. I looked into all this shortly after I got my Desire not having had any experience of Google Mail or Android before. After some experimentation that is what I have found.
I do agree that this part of the functionality is extremely lacking and it seems from other peoples' posts that it is also extremely buggy too. I do not like having to go via Google to do this stuff. I think this stuff should be integrated into the phone by itself and then linking to Google and anything else should be an extra.
It's all the more annoying that it's an obvious function to include, but that no-one has connected the dots. Or at least connected them in a technically competant fashion.
If I knew how, I'd knock up a really simple app to let you sync birthdays and anniversaries in the contacts to the calendar. As it is I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Android SDK and Java let alone doing anything practical.
Perhaps there's someone out there that is further up the Android Development learning curve that can put something together.

If I had the time (and not already too many projects to work with) I could perhaps put something together (If I knew there was some nice APIs)...
But I tried eboBirthday and it works ok.. (Far from ultimate and I can't even call it "good"..). First it downloaded all the birthdays from Facebook (and displays it in a extremely plain interface). But I can't say that it went smooth.. It was a bit "buggy" and I got an error at the end (even if it seemed to have downloaded all the info fine).
Then by using eboBirthday Contact Sync (also free in the market) that match my Google Contacts with my Facebook contacts and updated them..
And when I looked at my Google Calendar, the info was already there (no need to remove the Contacts birthdays calendar etc).
And then I just synced my calendar in the phone and now, at least, got all the birthdays for my Google Contacts in my calendar (plus reminders from eboBirthday).

Google Contacts newbie

Right, this is my first smartphone, so can someone explain something to me.
I don't have a Gmail account (I use the HTC Mail thing to access my Sky email account when I want to)
What I don't understand is the whole "Google Contacts" thing?
Where do these contacts sync to?
Can I enter the contacts on my phone and then sync them to the Internet (rather than have them stored on my phone?)
Do I need a Gmail account for this?
Any help and tips would be gratefully recieved.
Thanks

Yes you need a google account,
And yes the phone will automatically sync the contacts to your google account.
Fon22

The google contacts will sync to your gmail account, and be stored on the internet.
Creating a gmail account is fast and easy and you get a rediculous amount of storage (mine is at 7447 MB right now, and I am only useing 200 some MBs and I never delete things and have had the service since 2004).

jock23 said:
What I don't understand is the whole "Google Contacts" thing?
Where do these contacts sync to?
Can I enter the contacts on my phone and then sync them to the Internet (rather than have them stored on my phone?)
Do I need a Gmail account for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
with google/gmail account you have an access to plenty of google services -- google contacts is one of them.
htc desire has it's own People program that manages contacts for you. it can store your contacts for you in three different places:
- sim card
- phone
- google account
if you choose to store your contact as google contact, your phone will automatically submit your contact to google contacts service. so that you can manage your contacts there, sync with other devices/services that can use google contacts service, etc.
contacts stored on the phone or on sim card are, simply put, local to the phone -- not easily available elsewhere (i guess that you have to use htc sync, to push them somewhere)
how it works for me? i keep all my contacts as google contacts, so that when i add contact on my phone, it's automatically available on google contacts service site. most of the time i add contacts using webpage -- as it's faster -- these contacts are synced to my phone automatically as well.
VERY IMPORTANT: do not add birth date to your google contacts on your phone -- such contacts won't sync properly -- they will just disappear from the phone \-: luckly most of my contacts are linked with their facebook accounts -- and People app gets brith date form there.

I can't sync the contacts in both ways... only from the gmail account to the pda. There is any explanation?

Maybe the contacts on your phone are set to be "Phone" contacts rather than "Google" contacts? If you did sync them from Outlook to your phone, then that's the case. To convert all of them to Google contacts, export them to the SD card, delete all and re-import them. Then it will ask whether they should be Phone- or Google-contacts.

Thanks, I will try.

Android multi Calendar confusion ...

I'm getting mighty confused by these multiple calendars that have appeared on my device and getting them to sync with my Google calendar.
Here's my set up. I have all contacts and calendars on my Google account before I started. I set up my Desire to sync with them using Google account.
All seemed fine but I found the Gmail app on Desire pretty limiting so I set up an Exchange activesync account linked to my gmail account for my mail (always worked well on my HD) and set it to sync calendar and contacts too. I then disabled all the syncing through the google account to avoid complications.
Unfortunately the exchange account doesn't seem to be configured for push and has no option to change this but that's not why I'm here.
Coming from WM, I'm used to having one calendar that is in sync between Outlook on PC, Google calendar and mobile device.
When I co to calendars on my Desire now I have no less than 4:
My Calendar
xxx @ gmail.com
Exchange
PC Sync
What's going on here? Which is which? So far HTC Sync connects but will not swap any contacts or calendar items with device and vice versa. Nor do appointments I add to the device show up on Google Calendar.
I suspect that this is because these different profiles seem to be associated with one platform - outlook / google / desire - or another.
Can anyone shed any light?
Many thanks, M1.

For anyone else trying to work this out there is a useful (bit old) thread here:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google Mobile/thread?tid=6d1605a796be89fd&hl=en
It seems you need to be careful which calendar you add entries too if you want them to sync with cloud mail - I unticked the box next to My Calendar so now entries I add on the Desire default to the google account calendar and sync as expected.
Now have to get to grips with the PC Sync calendar and work out why none of my events and contacts are syncing with out look. Sigh - it's just another learning curve i guess ...

Mark One said:
Unfortunately the exchange account doesn't seem to be configured for push and has no option to change this but that's not why I'm here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Push can be enabled under the Exchange ActiveSync Settings. It defaults to every 10 minutes, there's a Push Mail option.
Mark One said:
When I co to calendars on my Desire now I have no less than 4:
My Calendar
xxx @ gmail.com
Exchange
PC Sync
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Untick them all except Exchange and you'll just see Calendar entries updated by Exchange. I don't have an Exchange option incidentally, so just untick them all and it still shows.
xx @gmail.com is using the Google Sync interface but you said you dislike the Gmail App. PC Sync is for using HTC Sync via Outlook. This is really for non-Google Calendars/people locked into using Outlook. As you're using Google, you're better off updating direct from Google.
You can in theory use Exchange ActiveSync for E-Mail and Google for Calendar/Contacts or visa versa but obviously it makes more sense to use one method or the other. As Gmail supports Exchange ActiveSync, there is basically crossover between using Exchange ActiveSync (and the HTC Mail App) or Google Sync (and the Gmail App).
Mark One said:
Now have to get to grips with the PC Sync calendar and work out why none of my events and contacts are syncing with out look. Sigh - it's just another learning curve i guess ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I presume, so you have them in Outlook too? Don't bother.
I use GSyncit to update Outlook. This talks directly to Google and gets Contacts/Calendar. It's well worth the $10-15. For me it goes:
* Outlook to Google via GSyncit: Both ways
* Google to HTC Desire via Exchange ActiveSync (or Google Sync if I prefer): Again both ways

whats the best way to manage contacts?

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

[Q] Contacts - Exchange, Windows live, Facebook and Linkedin

I don't have a Windows phone, yet, but I am trying to prepere my contact lists for my new phone.
This is how I started:
I have an private exchange account with about 200 contacts.
I have made my exchange account a Windows Live, because i use mye exchange account with MSN Messenger (about 80 of 200 contacts)
In Windows Live, I have connected Facebook and Linkedin to sync contacts from this services.
How will this exampel contact look on Windows Phone ?
Exchange: Don Johnsen, [email protected], company phone: 1122334455
Windows Live: Don Johnsen, [email protected]
Facebook: Don Johnsen, [email protected], privat phone: 5544332211, Works for Company1, Private adresse: Privatelane 123
Linkedin: Don Johnsen, [email protected], Works for Company1, Company1 adresse, Company fax nr: 55555555
How will the calender look on Windows Phone ?
Will I get facebook events in the calender ?

You don't get Facebook events in the calendar by default. I don't know if there's a way to get them to show there.
Your LinkedIn contact info will show as Live. You can link multiple sources to one contact card, it works fairly well.

Thanks.
Someone with an example of a contactcard with multiple contact info ?
What profile pictures will it use, or can I change from facebook, Linkedin or MSN ?
Will I be able to choose mailadress to send to ?

By default it uses the picture from Facebook, but you can change that and use a photo from a different contact source or from your phone.
Yes, you can choose email addresses.
It's difficult to show a contact card because there's no way to make a screenshot. There are pictures on the internet, a quick Google search will help you.

basically what happens is that you can "link" contact cards together, so that way you can see all the different information from the different places in 1 card. the disadvantage is that you will get double ups (so if you had the same email address for the person across 3 places, you'd see it 3 times in their contact card with it saying where each came from).
as for editting details, i'm not sure but from what i'm aware, you edit for 1 type. so for example, you had 1 contact with 3 different locations for data (your exchange, windows live, facebook), you cannot edit facebook of course, so what would happen is you would be given the option to edit which one you want (your exchange or windows live). so if you wanted the data to sync, you would have to edit twice, one for your windows live and one for your exchange. somewhat sucks, but that's the way it works. there might be third party applications (desktop) that can sync exchange with windows live regularly so you don't have to worry, but i'm not familiar enough with it.

I am having an issue with syncing new contacts. I connected LinkedIn to my Windows Live account. It updated some of my contacts that I already had and added others that were only in LinkedIn and not in the Live account.
They are showing up correctly in my Live account but the new contacts and updated info that LinkedIn merged are not syncing/showing on my phone.
Any ideas how to fix this?

I have several question regarding contacts, cause it seems little bit chaotic.
1. I set up my Live account, connected it with my gmail, facebook, linked in etc. and then syncd with phone - zero contacts in my phone. SO I realized, that you can sync live with gmail, but it will not import phone contacts... and if you set gmail account on your phone (not in live) it will download the contacts from the account, but will not sync them with live. It sucks. You can import contacts in live from gmail directly in browser (there is an import gmail option). Buit anyway, it sucks, because I thought, that my live account will be able to sync different contacts so they will be updated all the time - I will change something in gmail and it will be updated in WP7, I will change WP7 and it will sync with gmail. NO WAY THIS IS HAPPENING. SAD.
2. LinkedIn - my LinkedIn contacts are showing OK in Live.com, with pictures etc. But, they are not showing with pictures on the phone and they are not even showing all information from linkedin. Is there a way how to change it (I want pictures from these contacts to some of my phone conracts after i link them?
3. Facebook - I thought, that when I connect facebook in live.com, that it will be connected automatically in the phone as well. It isnt. It does show updates in people hub, but it will not show contacts in contact list, if you want them to show, again, you will have to add facebook account to your phone. BUt these will not be synced with your live, so when you link facebook contact with linked in conbtact and gmail contact and then you hard reset the phone and sync it with live, you will not have ONE contact, you will have three different unlinked contacts, becuase link is done just in phone. WHICH SUCKS.
4. Oh, and I just realized, that when I imported my contacts from gmail to live and then synced them to WP7, the contacts on my phone do not show phone numbers! My live contacts show the phone numbers, but they are not synced to the phone! WTF? Aarrrgh... So I will have to sync my gmail contacts with numbers with my phone as a separate account to be able to call those contacts...
Any advices how to avoiud these problems, or am i wrong?

chumaj001 said:
I have several question regarding contacts, cause it seems little bit chaotic.
1. I set up my Live account, connected it with my gmail, facebook, linked in etc. and then syncd with phone - zero contacts in my phone. SO I realized, that you can sync live with gmail, but it will not import phone contacts... and if you set gmail account on your phone (not in live) it will download the contacts from the account, but will not sync them with live. It sucks. You can import contacts in live from gmail directly in browser (there is an import gmail option). Buit anyway, it sucks, because I thought, that my live account will be able to sync different contacts so they will be updated all the time - I will change something in gmail and it will be updated in WP7, I will change WP7 and it will sync with gmail. NO WAY THIS IS HAPPENING. SAD.
2. LinkedIn - my LinkedIn contacts are showing OK in Live.com, with pictures etc. But, they are not showing with pictures on the phone and they are not even showing all information from linkedin. Is there a way how to change it (I want pictures from these contacts to some of my phone conracts after i link them?
3. Facebook - I thought, that when I connect facebook in live.com, that it will be connected automatically in the phone as well. It isnt. It does show updates in people hub, but it will not show contacts in contact list, if you want them to show, again, you will have to add facebook account to your phone. BUt these will not be synced with your live, so when you link facebook contact with linked in conbtact and gmail contact and then you hard reset the phone and sync it with live, you will not have ONE contact, you will have three different unlinked contacts, becuase link is done just in phone. WHICH SUCKS.
Any advices how to avoiud these problems, or am i wrong?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My problem is the same as your number 2 problem. If anyone knows how to sync all the data it would be greatly appreciated.

I tried to google it and realized, that I am not the only one in the world with the same problem. There are lot of people with that problem and it seems, that it may appear during time, first everything is synced right from live, and then it stops working, phone numbers and pictures dissapear etc. Also, there is no answer to that problem from MS.
So, I tried following:
1. Deleted all my contacts from live
2. Diconected all the social networks in live.
3. Synced my phone with live, so there were no contacts on my phone as well
4. Deleted all account on my phone (facebook)
5. Restarted the phone
5. Imported contacts from gmail to live again
6. Connected live with facebook and linkedin again
7. Synced my phone with live
At first, it seemed to work, my gmail contacts appeared with numbers again.
There were no pictures at gmail contatcs that should have them (even that during my first sync, they were imported)
And the worst thing is, that when I started syncing my liveID to my phone it went to same weird loop. I have 350 contacts in live, but the syncing doesnt seem to stop, right now it says it is syncing contact 10000 (!) and continues to sync (also reported by many other users on MS answers forum).
So, the whole thing seems to be totally screwed.
Any advices?

I wonder if a hard reset then resyncing with my Live account would work. I'm not sure if since I added the LinkedIn relationship after the initial transfer that is the problem.

So, I hardreseted and the problem remains. It is probably caused by some incompatible data from gmail (i gues it could be HTC Sense notes about my facebook links on android). Most bizzare thing is, that it doesnt happen when you sync the same contacts directly with gmail. Hotmail is definitelly ****ed up and nobody at support is trying to solve this. There is couple of really desperate guys at MS forums.

chumaj001 said:
I have several question regarding contacts, cause it seems little bit chaotic.
1. I set up my Live account, connected it with my gmail, facebook, linked in etc. and then syncd with phone - zero contacts in my phone. SO I realized, that you can sync live with gmail, but it will not import phone contacts... and if you set gmail account on your phone (not in live) it will download the contacts from the account, but will not sync them with live. It sucks. You can import contacts in live from gmail directly in browser (there is an import gmail option). Buit anyway, it sucks, because I thought, that my live account will be able to sync different contacts so they will be updated all the time - I will change something in gmail and it will be updated in WP7, I will change WP7 and it will sync with gmail. NO WAY THIS IS HAPPENING. SAD.
2. LinkedIn - my LinkedIn contacts are showing OK in Live.com, with pictures etc. But, they are not showing with pictures on the phone and they are not even showing all information from linkedin. Is there a way how to change it (I want pictures from these contacts to some of my phone conracts after i link them?
3. Facebook - I thought, that when I connect facebook in live.com, that it will be connected automatically in the phone as well. It isnt. It does show updates in people hub, but it will not show contacts in contact list, if you want them to show, again, you will have to add facebook account to your phone. BUt these will not be synced with your live, so when you link facebook contact with linked in conbtact and gmail contact and then you hard reset the phone and sync it with live, you will not have ONE contact, you will have three different unlinked contacts, becuase link is done just in phone. WHICH SUCKS.
4. Oh, and I just realized, that when I imported my contacts from gmail to live and then synced them to WP7, the contacts on my phone do not show phone numbers! My live contacts show the phone numbers, but they are not synced to the phone! WTF? Aarrrgh... So I will have to sync my gmail contacts with numbers with my phone as a separate account to be able to call those contacts...
Any advices how to avoid these problems, or am i wrong?
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All I did was to setup my Contacts in Windows Live uploading them from Outlook in the first place. Then I cleaned them up and finally I added my Facebook account.
The phone automatically matched more then half of my contacts and linked their accounts. I needed to manually link some of them because of accents in their names, but that was not a problem.

i think i may hit some these problem when i install windows phone 7 (currently running android). im looking at sorting out my calenders and contacts and need some advice. here is my setup:
i have 7 email accounts i want to sync with my phone:
2x windows live (1 main one and 1 work one)
2x google mail (1 main one and 2 work ones)
1x yahoo 1
1x ISP (virgin media)
1x work
currently i use outlook 2010 to send/recieve mail from all of them, and manage my contacts that i use. the contacts are managed as follows:
main gmail: phonebook contacts (i.e. everyone i have a phone number for)
work gmail: no contacts
yahoo: online addressbook with outdated contacts (not managed through outlook)
ISP: no contacts
work: no contacts
work windows live: work contacts (email only)
main windows live: a mix of everything, some outdated contacts
on top of this, my facebook and linked in accounts are linked to my main windows live account.
for calenders, i currently run 2, 1 from outlook, and 1 from windows live. the outlook calender is automatically synced with the main gmail calender through the google calender sync app on the pc.
my questions are:
1. what is the best account to have the 'phonebook' contacts in
2. does windows phone 7 merge all addressbooks into 1 big address book
3. if i wanted to kep my contacts/calenders synced between all my email accounts and my wp7 device, how could i go about this?
4. if i had the same address book in each mail account, would i end up with multiple contacts/multiple details in my address book on my phone?
the reason i have so many email addresses is a do freelance work on the side of my studying, and i have a seperate email account for each client i do work for. i also use things like yahoo groups and the google services.
i suppose an additional question would be:
5. can i merge all the email account into 1 account, and seperate the emails into groups (this would need to be done on the pc and on the phone). this would probably cut down my email accounts 4!

^^^
1) You can use your personal Windows Live account as the default. It works great for having your main contacts (phonebook) and calendar synced.
2) No, you get one separate Tile for each account so you can pin it to the start screen and see the number of unread emails per account.
3) I would try to cut them down to two at the most. One for Windows Live and one for Gmail. Having too many would be a PITA and bothersome to keep tabs on.
4) The phone will automatically match contacts and their details from different account. If you find that some are not linked, you can always do it manually. This feature works great, either automatically or manual adding.
5) You can configure you main Windows Live account to retrieve mails from other account and have them separated by folders. You can even send mail using those accounts.
You can also have your two WL account merged and have one Gmail account retrieve mail from the other and keep. This way, you will end up with just two separate account, one for WL and one for Gmail.
Hope this helps.

ajua said:
^^^
1) You can use your personal Windows Live account as the default. It works great for having your main contacts (phonebook) and calendar synced.
2) No, you get one separate Tile for each account so you can pin it to the start screen and see the number of unread emails per account.
3) I would try to cut them down to two at the most. One for Windows Live and one for Gmail. Having too many would be a PITA and bothersome to keep tabs on.
4) The phone will automatically match contacts and their details from different account. If you find that some are not linked, you can always do it manually. This feature works great, either automatically or manual adding.
5) You can configure you main Windows Live account to retrieve mails from other account and have them separated by folders. You can even send mail using those accounts.
You can also have your two WL account merged and have one Gmail account retrieve mail from the other and keep. This way, you will end up with just two separate account, one for WL and one for Gmail.
Hope this helps.
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i think it does. i suppose one of my other concerns is that i dont want all of my windows live contacts in my phonebook, as they are email only. is there a way of only listing contacts with phone numbers? i think what i am going to do it set up mail forwarding, and then have the mail sorted into folders in my windows live account. i have aquired a lot of contacts over the years and im sure i dont need/use about 75% of them any more!