[Q] How do I delete all Phone contacts from joined contacts? - T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII

Somewhere along the way, all my contacts are joined contacts consisting of my Google contact joined with (usually) the same "Phone" (not SIM) contact. And I also have several "Phone" only contacts that consist only of some email contact I had sent at one time. What I'd like to do is to delete all the contacts stored on the phone while keeping my Google contacts only. I know I can unjoin each of my contacts individually and then delete the "Phone" contact... But is there an easier way to do this without doing them one at a time?
Thanks for any help.

denzelnuke said:
Somewhere along the way, all my contacts are joined contacts consisting of my Google contact joined with (usually) the same "Phone" (not SIM) contact. And I also have several "Phone" only contacts that consist only of some email contact I had sent at one time. What I'd like to do is to delete all the contacts stored on the phone while keeping my Google contacts only. I know I can unjoin each of my contacts individually and then delete the "Phone" contact... But is there an easier way to do this without doing them one at a time?
Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wipe contact storage. Resync.

Thanks, thought I had tried that. Had to reboot to make all the contact disappear.
Application manager>Contacts Storage>Clear Data>REBOOT>resync
Thanks for your help.

Related

Some answers from HTC

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.
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.

Contacts - google!

I do find the HTC people (contacts) both useful and confusing and have a few questions.
:: I find it a lot easier to edit contacts in my google account on the PC (online) and put contact details like email, phone numbers etc all together under one contact. However, if I do a google contact sync on my phone, it doesn't seem to change anything on the phone when I sync. Is there a way or place to be able to set the sync to change phone details when a change is made online first?
:: It becomes really confusing when you click on a particular contact and then see a list of 6,7 or 8 different contact references for one contact as HTC Sense seems to put all the similar contacts you have together and "linked". Is there a way to try and put all these together and have them as one contact only without manually adding details from one contact reference to another until they all reside under one contact point?
Any other tips greatly appreciated....
If I remember correctly, you can merge contacts in your Google account online. Just tick the duplicates and you should see the option.
Raul Duke said:
If I remember correctly, you can merge contacts in your Google account online. Just tick the duplicates and you should see the option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, but once you've done that, when syncing with the phone it doesn't seem to overide what you have on the phone.
Strange. It does for me.
If I make changes online then sync, I can see my changes.
There is a linked button on the top right in htc people, probably there is the problem.
Found exactly what I've been looking for since I got my desire. I'm absolutely shocked that it's taken this long to find anything and when I have, it's for 1.6 only
http://www.eigo.co.uk/News-Article.aspx?NewsArticleID=62
Anyone know of another app that does this too but for 2.1 or 2.2?
Just to verify - are your contacts in Desire stored as Google contacts or Phone contacts?
ferus said:
Just to verify - are your contacts in Desire stored as Google contacts or Phone contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm looking for something that does EXACTLY what the above app does. I have a mixture of contacts on phone and google. The google ones are okay. Some contacts when I click on edit, show 5 to 7 different contacts I can edit that are linked. one on google and then another 6 on phone. All I am trying to do is find an app (like the one I posted for 1.6) that allow a merge of all those in to my google contact with all the information.
The same issue obviously existed back in 1.6 days and is still here now
Bandare said:
I'm looking for something that does EXACTLY what the above app does. I have a mixture of contacts on phone and google. The google ones are okay. Some contacts when I click on edit, show 5 to 7 different contacts I can edit that are linked. one on google and then another 6 on phone. All I am trying to do is find an app (like the one I posted for 1.6) that allow a merge of all those in to my google contact with all the information.
The same issue obviously existed back in 1.6 days and is still here now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure this will help you but when I first got my Desire I saved all my contacts as phone contacts.
Later I realized that they are not synchronized with anything (I don't use Outlook) so I decided to make them all Google contacts.
I exported all of them to sdCard and then imported the file through my Google contacts web application.
It's a long shot but perhaps if you did that then you could merge all duplicates directly in the Google contacts app.
I hope my post isn't too confusing
I'll give that a go... thanks
UPDATE: ok, I have done that and it's added the phone contacts and merged those that need to be merged. However, I now have a huge problem
I now have for every contact that needed merging, 10 or 12 records for the same email and/or phone number. Is there a way in the google contacts web to be able to sort and delete duplicate info within a contact? I can't find it and if not, this is going to be a right pain for 900 contacts
Did u set the people app to view Google contact only?. In the people app, press menu and select view. Make sure the check box is viewing Google contact only.
antu_pogroms said:
Did u set the people app to view Google contact only?. In the people app, press menu and select view. Make sure the check box is viewing Google contact only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the phone I exported phone contacts only......
Bandare said:
I'll give that a go... thanks
UPDATE: ok, I have done that and it's added the phone contacts and merged those that need to be merged. However, I now have a huge problem
I now have for every contact that needed merging, 10 or 12 records for the same email and/or phone number. Is there a way in the google contacts web to be able to sort and delete duplicate info within a contact? I can't find it and if not, this is going to be a right pain for 900 contacts
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Merging your contacts created for the same number/email a separate record?
That is strange, it never happened to me.
I just did a test to be sure - I created a duplicate contact with the same mobile number and after merging the final contact had only one number stored. No separate record has been created.
All I can suggest now is to try and delete the contacts that needed merging (from both Google and Phone contacts) and then import your exported Phone contacts. This way you should not have any duplicates and the imported contacts will be automatically stored as Google ones.
The Google Contacts web app should help you with deleting.
Or you can try Contact Analyzer 2 http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/tools/contact-analyzer-2_jmsk.html although I only read the description, I never tried it. But it might prove useful to you.
Have you checked Gmail contacts on your syncing settings?

Change contact location (SIM, Google, Phone) impossible ?

Is there any way to change the contact's "location" (SIM, Google, Phone) ?
I would like to get all my "Phone" contacts synchronized with Google, but i can' find any way how to change the setting from "Phone" to "Google".
I can't find any way to sync all the contacts (SIM+Google+Phone) with Google.
Is it a bug or do I missed somthing ?
Have you tried Contacts > Menu > Import/Export?
that doesn't work, I've tried. There are a few threads here asking exactly the same question.
All we'd like is to be able to put all the contact links we have from google, facebook, phone, phone, phone and phone for one contact to go under one contact, hopefully, the google one, to include all the relevant info from all the places like facebook. I don't believe anyone has said how this can be done yet.
Bandare said:
that doesn't work, I've tried. There are a few threads here asking exactly the same question.
All we'd like is to be able to put all the contact links we have from google, facebook, phone, phone, phone and phone for one contact to go under one contact, hopefully, the google one, to include all the relevant info from all the places like facebook. I don't believe anyone has said how this can be done yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's really not the same thing as what the OP was asking. Mind me asking why you want to change that, tho? It's only a horrifying mess in the edit contact screen, when viewing the contact I only see one entry (Name, phone, email, address, nickname, facebook profile).
Of course, when I hit edit I have
Google contact with phone, email
Google contact with another email
Google contact with phone, email, address, nickname
Facebook contact
It's all very derp.
I don't want to link all the contact accounts for one person (his twitter, phone, gmail accounts) together.
what i want is to move all the "Phone" contacts to "Google" contacts location.
Example: when I click on People->Menu->View, then i have
SIM 0
Google 41
Phone 123
contacts
I want to have 41+123= 164 Google contacts only.
because i want automatically backup contacts on Gmail (e.g. to be able to restore them after ROM flash)
When i click on individual contact, then i see "Phone" on the right upper corner of the contact screen. i want to see "google" there. But it's not editable. Its only linkable ...
When i restored my contacts using mybackup pro they all restored as google contacts as well as phone contacts, so then i just deleted all of my phone cntcts using a contact deleter app from the market.
Google contacts all the way!
The google contacts have the phone and facebook info combined so photo birthday and all that.
thanks for the tips.
unfortunately my myBackup trial has allready expired.
but i have exported all "Phone" contacts to a *.vcf file, then deleted all contacts and finally imported them from *.vcf into "Google" contacts.
hopefully it will not mess up after synchronization with google (which is running in this moment)
I recently kinda done this, I just exported all contacts, and then imported multiple rather than one or all, and when you import it asked you where you wish to save them, Gmail, phone or sim, This is the ONLY way I can see about doing this
It's probably the only way to do this and it worked for me.
problem solved.

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] Can't separate joined contacts

I noticed one of my contacts on my phone was somehow showing up as three separate contacts, even though on Google's contact list they're all just one. So I went through and "joined" them. But I got carried away and accidentally joined all the "suggested" contacts, including one that was actually a different person.
I immediately went back and used "separate," but it didn't actually separate the contacts - instead, I have one contact with both contacts' emails and phone numbers. Worse, my phone thinks they're separated, so I no longer have the "separate" option. But when I check my contacts in Gmail or contacts.google.com on my desktop, I still see two separate contacts.
Any suggestions?
Sync with Gmail
"Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light."
It's synced contacts with Google a few times already and it's still showing one contact.
I would suggest deleting the errantly-joined contact(s) and then re-adding them. It's probably the simplest approach if this is a one time problem.
shuckthatjive said:
It's synced contacts with Google a few times already and it's still showing one contact.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
clear contact app data and have it resync with google.
I had the same problem on my Samsung Galaxy S3. I tried a different approach and it seemed to work. I just deleted one of the accounts from my phone and then re-added it. After it synced up the joined contacts were now separated. Because the data is all saved in the cloud this method doesn't require you to delete and then type in any contact information. If you have lots of joined contacts however it will break all of those links. If you just need to separate a single contact it will probably be easier to just delete and recreate that single contact.

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