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.
I'm still confused about syncing contacts. I have a Desire on Orange. I have a gmail account, and I use the htc mail app and connect to my gmail account using exchange. I sync my contacts to my gmail account using `google/sync contacts` from the sync page, and I sync my mail using `exchange activesync`. I do this because I can see/edit my contacts via the web gmail page (which is easier/faster than doing it on the phone), and because the mail app is better than the gmail app. But it seems that I have some contact information on my phone which is not visible via the gmail website. To pick one example, it's showing as a `linked contact` between 'exchange' and 'google'. Can I see my exchange contacts online? Where are they? I want them in one place, so I can back them up occasionally (I've already lost my contacts once as I set my phone up). It would seem to make sense, given that some contact info appears to be on exchange somewhere, to have them all there - then I can stop syncing with 'google' on my phone altogether, but I have to be able to see/edit/back them up first.
I've tried googling for this, but all I see is Googles own pages for other platforms, non-free apps to do exchange etc etc.
poldie said:
I'm still confused about syncing contacts. I have a Desire on Orange. I have a gmail account, and I use the htc mail app and connect to my gmail account using exchange. I sync my contacts to my gmail account using `google/sync contacts` from the sync page, and I sync my mail using `exchange activesync`. I do this because I can see/edit my contacts via the web gmail page (which is easier/faster than doing it on the phone), and because the mail app is better than the gmail app. But it seems that I have some contact information on my phone which is not visible via the gmail website. To pick one example, it's showing as a `linked contact` between 'exchange' and 'google'. Can I see my exchange contacts online? Where are they? I want them in one place, so I can back them up occasionally (I've already lost my contacts once as I set my phone up). It would seem to make sense, given that some contact info appears to be on exchange somewhere, to have them all there - then I can stop syncing with 'google' on my phone altogether, but I have to be able to see/edit/back them up first.
I've tried googling for this, but all I see is Googles own pages for other platforms, non-free apps to do exchange etc etc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same issues too
Well i don't use exchange, but i can say how i use my gmail sync:
I use Sync/google account on the definitions menu to sync my google calendar, contacts and mail.
This allows me to use mail on gmail app (not htc mail app), calendar on android calendar (i can use htc calendar widgets) and manage online contacts.
Since i previously added my "phone" contacts to phone memory and to a group on google contacts, they have linked to each other and i can mantain an online and local copy of them (this is great to add a hi res picture to contact, since i add the picture to online and local and then choose local picture to be displayed).
I do know that some fields from online google contacts and local contacts are different, and i think this is as stupid as the picture not having quality on google contacts online, but i hope they would solve it in a near future.
I hope that from now on, since google is saying that the BIG changes on Android are done, they will spend some time dealing with the little details that can be very annoying...
Same issue here.
Sync of Contacts
Google-Contacts -> Desire: works
Desire -> Google-Contacts: dosent work
If i try to add or change a birthday on the phone it does not arrive theo google-contacts account. The other way works. Biggest issue on this fine phone.
Hexxer said:
Same issue here.
Sync of Contacts
Google-Contacts -> Desire: works
Desire -> Google-Contacts: dosent work
If i try to add or change a birthday on the phone it does not arrive theo google-contacts account. The other way works. Biggest issue on this fine phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, that issues are from Android and Gmail and not from the Desire.
You should add birthday dates to Google contacts or else the synchronization wont work well, but i do agree these are major stuffs that really annoy me!
There could be an interesseting thing.
I have Software-Version 1.15.XXXX (T-Mobile, rooted Phone) and i found an O2 User with 1.20.XXX - he said it works at his phone.
Hexxer said:
There could be an interesseting thing.
I have Software-Version 1.15.XXXX (T-Mobile, rooted Phone) and i found an O2 User with 1.20.XXX - he said it works at his phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uau! How can he have an 1.20.xxx? I have unlocked Desire also with 1.15.XXX and no updates for me!
Well I now have 1.21.405.2 updated from ota.
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?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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!
On my phone, I had all my contacts saved under [email protected] (my university email runs on gmail system) google account althought i never had any success syncing them from my phone.
Just now I deleted that google account on the phone forgetting the fact all my phone numbers were there. Obviously I cant get em back from my google account since there was never a successful sync.
Can anyone tell me how I can get back my contacts?
Thanks
mmorshed2k said:
On my phone, I had all my contacts saved under [email protected] (my university email runs on gmail system) google account althought i never had any success syncing them from my phone.
Just now I deleted that google account on the phone forgetting the fact all my phone numbers were there. Obviously I cant get em back from my google account since there was never a successful sync.
Can anyone tell me how I can get back my contacts?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Re add a Google account ?
madd0g said:
Re add a Google account ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
lol this.. just add the google account back and everything should be fine
k786 said:
lol this.. just add the google account back and everything should be fine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It never synced with the mail system. So basically I'm asking whether I can recover it from within the phone instead of syncing
Export your contacts to another Gmail account, log in with that and sync - job done!
If they didn't sync to an account your SOL. Sorry.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
mmorshed2k said:
It never synced with the mail system. So basically I'm asking whether I can recover it from within the phone instead of syncing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you can access your uni mail in the Google Apps interface, maybe you can export your contacts there into .csv or .vcf. So you can import them in your main Google account or just locally on the phone via 3rd party Android app that imports contacts.