Verizon backup assistant and the contact mess.. - Samsung Galaxy Nexus

So my mom recently got a samsung galaxy s3, she originally had a galaxy nexus, and before that an envy 2.
We used verizon backup assistant to backup all the contacts on her envy 2, because that was the only simple contact backup available for the envy.
She now has
A. Google sync backing up all her NEWER contacts
B. Backup assistant backing up her older contacts
C. A bunch of hotmail contacts.
Basically I created a huge mess... If I were to use backup assistant on the SGS3, how would I go about changing each and every contact to sync with google past that point?
I'm just wondering if there is a simple way to go about this without going through each and every contact.

Dudenell said:
So my mom recently got a samsung galaxy s3, she originally had a galaxy nexus, and before that an envy 2.
We used verizon backup assistant to backup all the contacts on her envy 2, because that was the only simple contact backup available for the envy.
She now has
A. Google sync backing up all her NEWER contacts
B. Backup assistant backing up her older contacts
C. A bunch of hotmail contacts.
Basically I created a huge mess... If I were to use backup assistant on the SGS3, how would I go about changing each and every contact to sync with google past that point?
I'm just wondering if there is a simple way to go about this without going through each and every contact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In people or contacts there should be an option your whole library as a .vcf . If you put that file on the new phone it will get all your contacts. But in reality your Google account should be backing up All your contacts. I had issues back in the of days with duplicate contacts. Turns out if you go into gmail on a computer there is an option to merge duplicates. If you don't think they are all being synced with Google then the .vcf method would be the safest. Then if you get dups just merge them in gmail

animal24 said:
In people or contacts there should be an option your whole library as a .vcf . If you put that file on the new phone it will get all your contacts. But in reality your Google account should be backing up All your contacts. I had issues back in the of days with duplicate contacts. Turns out if you go into gmail on a computer there is an option to merge duplicates. If you don't think they are all being synced with Google then the .vcf method would be the safest. Then if you get dups just merge them in gmail
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here is what I did.
Removed the hotmail account.
Exported the contact list and then imported into google
Merged contacts
Done
What I thought would happen originally was that removing my hotmail account would leave all the contacts associated with it, this was not the case.

Dudenell said:
Here is what I did.
Removed the hotmail account.
Exported the contact list and then imported into google
Merged contacts
Done
What I thought would happen originally was that removing my hotmail account would leave all the contacts associated with it, this was not the case.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I export the list and then import it to google. Do I need to delete contacts between exporting and importing as I assume your phone will have duplicates on the phone itself? (I already have contacts on the phone and not google so not sure if importing will now just cause the phone to have duplicates)

It depends on how your contacts were originally backed up. Assuming you wanted to start over clean it would export all your contacts, then clear the app data for the contacts (this will delete everything!) and then import the file into Google on your pc.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using xda premium

Related

[Q] Syncing contacts with Google

I have my Gmail account setup so that I can utilise the various syncing options between my Desire and Google. I use iCal successfully but am having trouble understanding how best to sync my phone contacts.
I always save a new contact to the phone but it seems that unless I also save them as a google contact on the phone, there is no way those numbers will sync to my Google contacts. Surely I don't have to save everything twice?
simon12 said:
I have my Gmail account setup so that I can utilise the various syncing options between my Desire and Google. I use iCal successfully but am having trouble understanding how best to sync my phone contacts.
I always save a new contacts to the phone but it seems that unless I also save them as a google contact on the phone, there is no way those numbers will sync to my Google contacts. Surely I don't have to save everything twice?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know the safest method of saving all your contact is to sync them with Google. I only have one set of contacts on my device and they are always in sync with Google, therefore the need for me to keep duplicate copies on my device diminished.
It is also very easy to then access your Google contacts from a PC and make any necessary changes, or indeed make the changes via your device.
Regards
Scott
So are you saying that I may as well just save them as Google contacts to begin with and not bother saving them to the phone or the sim card?
Some days ago, I also started the sync for all of my contact to google because I wanted to have them in some backup place. Now all my contacts are in google and if I create a new one I always create it as a google contact (otherwise no sync of course).
I transfered them the following way:
Contacts -> Menu -> Export to SD Card -> Select Phone or Sim (whatever you are saving on currently) : now you have all your contacts exported into one file
then
Contacts -> Menu -> Import from SD Card -> Select Google: now you should have all your contacts in your "google" phonebook
then
change the contact folder to google (will not show dupliactes)
then
sync with google
I saw that, after the sync, I had various double entries in my google account but you can merge them, works fine.
hope it helps a little with your problem, for me it was the easiest way to sync my phone contacts to google

[Q] Duplicate Phone Contacts

Whenever I sync my phone contacts after flashing a new ROM I get many duplicates. For example contact 1 will only appear once in my people list but it's synced to two phone contact entries. I'm talking purely about phone contacts and not google contacts.
I want to keep them on my phone as opposed to Google or the sim because I travel a lot and use different sim cards in different countries so it's easier for all my contacts to be on the phone.
Why might I be getting duplicates on most of my contacts and what can I do to stop this happening. I'm guessing it's something to do with backing up but I might be wrong.
duplicate contacts
xybadog said:
Whenever I sync my phone contacts after flashing a new ROM I get many duplicates. For example contact 1 will only appear once in my people list but it's synced to two phone contact entries. I'm talking purely about phone contacts and not google contacts.
I want to keep them on my phone as opposed to Google or the sim because I travel a lot and use different sim cards in different countries so it's easier for all my contacts to be on the phone.
Why might I be getting duplicates on most of my contacts and what can I do to stop this happening. I'm guessing it's something to do with backing up but I might be wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
To detect and delete/merge duplicate contacts, one may think to login to google account. Find the option of "find and merge duplicate contacts" under contacts. May be taking long time, seems to be simple and useful. Try.
Maybe those contacts have their phone numbers shared in their public Google profile.
Are both phone contacts of the same type?
I think that Google also backups up phone contacts if you activated that service. Not the same as syncing to a Google Contact.
You can also export contact as vcard (contact.vcf).
I don't use google service so that's how i do :
In contact, menu, import/export and export contacts to SD.
When you need it, import contacts from SD.

[Q] Question regarding which ROM to install & Backing Up Contacts

1: I've been running an ICS theme on my epic 4g touch for a little while and I'm looking into installing a ROM to improve speed and battery life. I've been struggling to choose between the most current version of Blazer, or Unnamed. They seem relatively similar apart from the fact that if I get Unnamed I'll have to flash an ICS theme over it, but I'd like opinions from everyone.
2: I understand for both of those ROMs you must wipe your phone. I have no issue with wiping apps as they can be reinstalled, but I need my contacts. I don't have an SD card and would prefer to not have to buy one, so is there any method to backing up my contacts that I could retrieve them post flashing?
Thanks in advance
1. I don't have either of those so can't help with that.
2. if you have a Gmail account set up you can back up contacts. its in accounts and sync under settings. just be sure to go online into your Gmail account to check. I thought I was backed up before and wasn't.
patrao_n said:
1. I don't have either of those so can't help with that.
2. if you have a Gmail account set up you can back up contacts. its in accounts and sync under settings. just be sure to go online into your Gmail account to check. I thought I was backed up before and wasn't.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried syncing the contacts to gmail before but when I checked the account, none of my contacts were there.
ya I believe I fixed it by going to accounts and sync. then clicked on the google account. unchecked all. then checked only contacts and hit sync now. if that doesn't work try removing account and then add it again. sorry I don't know of any third party way to backup the contacts.
The trick is to get all of your email contacts into Gmail on your PC even if you have to manually enter each one. Then they will sync automatically to your phone and you won't have to back anything up. If you use Outlook on your computer, I think there's a way to export your contacts into gmail with a csv file. I couldn't tell you how to do it but you should be able to find out by searching in Google forums. I did mine all manually when I first started using android and I've never had to back up anything. Google does it for me. I know this will sound really strange, but to get them all to sync to Gmail and into my phone contacts list, I had to enter a fake email address for the contacts I only had a phone number for. Now I can flash and wipe my phone all I want and all my email and phone contacts sync again as soon as my phone connects to Google servers. I have them stored on my sd card, too, but I never need to restore them from it. Make sure you have two way sync turned on in your Gmail account on your computer. If you want gmail to pull in all of your other email accounts such as Comcast or hotmail, you can set that up on your computer too in Gmail account settings. I get all my mail in Gmail now and don't even use the other email client on my phone.
When you create a contact it will give you 2 options. 1 to backup internal 2 to backup to Google. It seems you selected internal so you need to go to contacts and go through the menus until you switch all contacts to Google then do your sync through settings. Best of luck if your still having issues do a titanium backup.. but like the poster said above as long as you save your contacts to Google in the future it makes going from rom to rom a breeze
Sent from my SPH-D710 using XDA App
Sweet, thanks everyone. I've got my contacts onto Gmail. Anyone have opinions regarding Unnamed vs. Blazer?
There's also a way to backup manually your contact list. In contacts program hit menu then export. It saves the file as 00001.icf in the root of your sd card. After you export, use a file manager to go and make sure the file is there before proceeding. You could then copy it to your computer or email it as an attachment to yourself.
Or it could be .vcf I forgot

Cleaning up contacts?

ok - so I get that if I sync my Google contacts to my phone, I sometimes see a name or email address to someone I don't have saved as a contact. i.e. I put in a text and then put in a name and as I started typing the name, Steve, I saw the name of someone I emailed last year about some skis, Sam. I love how Google never forgets and saves names, numbers and emails of people you'll never contact again.
Anyhow, I cleaned up all my contacts and want to export them to my SD so that if I flash a new ROM I don't have to worry about losing my contacts. Some of my contacts don't have gmail/email/facebook, just names and numbers. I've done this in the past and when I import the contacts from my SD card - it ends up doubling or tripling up names in the contact list - all un-joined.
How can I export a clean list to the SD and import it back without creating 200 additional duplicate contacts?
Just clean and deal with your contacts from the Gmail site. Keeps things a lot simpler.
Epic 4G Touch perfected by Tiff and Calk!
I ran into the same issue myself. what I did was, cleaned up the contacts on my phone, export it to my SD card (it saves as a 0001.vcf file, but you can rename it if you want).
I was going to flash a custom ROM, so I wiped everything. And since you are flashing a new ROM yourself, its usually better to do a full wipe anyway. Once I got my phone up and running, I disabled sync contacts with my google account and made sure my contact list was empty. Then I just imported my saved contacts.
I backed up my SMS messages with SMS backup the same way, available for free in the market.
If you go into contacts you can hit menu while in contacts and set it to
show only contacts with a phone number or such
Sent from my SPH-D710 using xda premium
I had this issue as well when i first came to the Droid world. I had all these weird contacts showing up when I would search a name for a text or what have you. Found out that I had Google set to save contacts I once had and deleted or even any email addresses that I had ever sent to. I went to contacts on gmail and cleaned everything out and set gmail settings to not save the emails anymore. Not sure if this will help you or not but I thought I would share.
There is an app on the market that will scan and fix duplicates, merge contacts, and other things. I forget the name but just search for "contact cleaner" and it should show up.

[Q] Getting contacts saved from former Exchange account

This one is difficult for me.. And I have no idea how to solve it
I left the company where I've worked for 7 years. I have all my personal contacts synced to my former company's Exchange account. That account has since been locked, but my phone still retains all the contacts.
How do I move these Exchange account contacts to a specific contact list in Gmail (or another account)? When I try to do a backup of the phone, I can't find any backup program that lets me backup just my Exchange contacts.. instead. it tries to backup the 3,000 gmail "other" contacts as well, which is just a huge mess and what I don't want to retain or backup. I just want the Exchange contacts backed up.
BTW.. i also have the contacts synced on my ipad, so if u know of an IOS way to do this, I can do it on there.
Anyone? HELP!

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