Weird ghost contact issue - HTC 10 Questions & Answers

I'm going to do my very best to explain this issue, but it's not easy to make sense because the whole issue is so weird!! In every case if I refer to an app it's the stock app as provided with UK SIM free un-rooted phone. I've owned it a few days and everything I've ever added is still on there.
In my contacts app I can show all contacts from all accounts including show contacts without phone numbers, without email addresses, it really is showing me every contact that exists - these people are definitely not my contacts.
When I go into the photos app, one of the options is to use the photo as a contacts icon. It's at this point that it brings up 3 extra people! I do not have these people in my contacts on Outlook, they aren't in my circles on G+, I don't follow them on Twitter nor do they follow me and I'm not Facebook friends with them on the account that is registered to the phone. I have a second Facebook account for which my logon is my gmail account, on which I am friends with 16 people, one of whom is among the random contacts, but the other 2 of them I'm not friends with them on that Facebook either! And the other 15 friends from my Gmail Facebook account do not show up. The only other possibility which springs to mind is that I was friends with these 3 people on Facebook about 8 years and at least 3 phones ago, maybe some kind of HTC account or similar backup service is holding ghost contact details for them - but where? Previous phones were all HTC right back to when they made phones under other brands (One M8, One M7, Sensation, Wildfire, TyTNIII, TyTNI)
So the question is, how do I get rid of these people? They aren't visible anywhere else for me to delete them, all I can do is use a photo as a contact icon for them. Why is this a problem? Because I know their details will import into my car phonebook when I link that up and I'll have to scroll past them to get to people I'm actually friends with. The car list is not editable, I import everybody or nobody. And also because looking at their names when I want to edit real people annoys me out of all proportion.
Any idea where the random people are located so I can take them away? Thanks.

Related

Help understanding phonebook!

First of all, hopefully people will forgive me for not putting this with the other person's issues with the phone book as mine are slilghtly different.
Basically, I'm not understanding what is going on in my phonebook. Previously I was thinking that my Desire was syncing with All Contacts. But that's not what it's doing. Well, at least not only what it's doing. These are some of the issues that I'm having and I can't explain.
When I tap People - Menu - View, is shows "Google (781)" with "show auto GMail contacts" unchecked. However I have 339 entries in my GMail account for My Contacts and 653 All Contacts. I don't understand the difference.
When I have an unknown number contact me, and I add them to a known contact, "Jo Bloggs" say, when typing in "j - o - ..." I can have up to 3 entried pop up of Jo Bloggs. But then when I go to my People's list, I only see one entry. And in my All Contacts list, I only have one entry.
When I go to add an unknown contact to a known contact, in the list that pops up of (I'm assuming) all my contacts, there are contacts there that I do not see in my People list. I have unchecked "show auto GMail contact" so what is happening?
Can anyone PLEASE explain some of this. I'm trying to clear up my phone book and remove these duplicates and dead weight that I can't always see. It's obviously not simply a problem of syncing All Contacts when you don't want to.
Has anyone noticed any strange behaviour in their People's list???
I also find the phone book confusing along with the texting
I don't know if it is just me not use to smart phones
my last phone was the Sony Ericsson C 902
Did you sync with face book too? As that will added any contacts from their that have phone numbers.
I do not use anything like facebook
so no i did not
Nope. Haven't synced any social networking site at all.
I like to try and get one set sorted at a time. I have another account synced up for the calendar (not contacts). However they share exactly the same contacts so that wouldn't account for the mess of some contacts having no links, some having up to 3 that aren't duplicates. Not that I can find where these contacts came from anyway!
Why dont you copy the numbers you have from your old phone to the SIM card, .. and then import those contacts from SIM card to the Desire (if thats possible). try this before syncing with Gmail and see how it works
sorry to hijack thread but when you have an incoming call and you have a photo attached is it quite blurry or clear?
My sim card, and I think the sim cards of many other people, does not support multiple entries under one name. Nor does it support the amount of contacts I have in my GMail. Actually, I don't even think it supports the amount of information that can be held in phone storage/online accounts (stuff like addresses, birthdays etc)
Cleargrey said:
My sim card, and I think the sim cards of many other people, does not support multiple entries under one name. Nor does it support the amount of contacts I have in my GMail. Actually, I don't even think it supports the amount of information that can be held in phone storage/online accounts (stuff like addresses, birthdays etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah i know, it has very limited functionality, .. but if you got a correct name and phone number in your phone book, than you can sync the rest from Gmail if am not mistaken, this might help in having multiple accounts and such
now this is odd. I'm finding that every test contact I put in the phone, is not getting updated online. More than that, when it syncs, it deletes the contact.
I just tried:
1a Testgeneralgoogle
1a Test
and a third one I can't remember.
They just seemed to replace the former, then get deleted altogether.
But when I added "1a Testonline" to my online account, it appears on my phone.
Am I really the only person who is having this behaviour on their phone??? Is it simply a setting I'm missing?
Can someone try to add a test contact on their phone and see if their GMail contacts are updated properly, please.
(P.S. I should mention that I updated the number of a contact from my Desire, which showed up online. Then I updated their birthday at a separate time which didn't show up online and was reset to the incorrect date I had online.)
I'm getting my phone next week and I have a couple of questions about the phonebook too:
1/ I listed all my current contacts in GMail. So when I enter my GMail address on the phone, will it add them right away?
2/ If I enter my Facebook details and want to browse Facebook pics through the photos app, is it also gonna import my FB contacts? (I don't want it to)
Thanks!
@Ghisy. 1. Yes. 2. Haven't tried it.
I'm getting somewhere with finding out about the syncing issues I'm having. At least a little step. I've just found out that if I create a contact on the phone, and put in a birthdate, it won't appear in my online contacts when the phone syncs and it will get deleted when the phone does update. If there is no birthday, it syncs fine.
Kinda.
I'm finding that businesses are 50:50 when it comes to syncing. Some businesses are even not in my onine account anywhere and yet they're on my phone. And I have no idea where they came from but they are businesses that I have stored their details in the past.
This is almost seeming like a GMail issue as the phone can't make up contacts that I coincidently have used before.
Again, people are welcome to try at least to change a birthday or sync a new contact with a birthday and share what happens. I'd like to go to HTC saying the sync is not working fully, and it's happening to more than just me. If it's true of course.
I also seem to have some trouble wrapping my head around the phonebook (it shouldn't be that difficult should it?) After having read around on the forums I went to my google account and spent a while typing in my contacts which have synced fine as far as I can see.
I've set it under People to show only gmail contacts (and not sim)...but when I hit the "Phone" on the homepage it still shows my sim contacts...any way in changing this to show only gmail contacts? I'm a bit OCD-ish when it comes to this stuff. I like everything nice and neat
From what I've seen on my own, when you go into People - Menu - View, you can select which set of contacts to view. On mine at least, this config works for when tapping Phone and I don't see the other contacts.
Another aparent issue, I've just realised that I don't think there is a way to copy a phone contact to the synced (in my case Google) account. And on top of that, contacts that are sent via vcard, are sent to the phone. You don't seem to get an option.
But as always, I'm still trying to learn so I'm up for someone telling me I'm wrong.
anyone got an idea how to get rid of all the facebook contact/numbers that come up using phone function ? cuz i dont have in my contacts most of the people i have on facebook so its slightly annoying having to scroll through all of them
Cleargrey said:
From what I've seen on my own, when you go into People - Menu - View, you can select which set of contacts to view. On mine at least, this config works for when tapping Phone and I don't see the other contacts.
Another aparent issue, I've just realised that I don't think there is a way to copy a phone contact to the synced (in my case Google) account. And on top of that, contacts that are sent via vcard, are sent to the phone. You don't seem to get an option.
But as always, I'm still trying to learn so I'm up for someone telling me I'm wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I've changed my "People" view to show only google contacts. Just weird that when I go to "Phone" all my sim contacts still show as well as the google ones. I want to keep my contacts on my sim...just want to hide them from view. Hmm more investigating required...
When you ad a new contact, you have to select "contact type" -> "Google" instead of "Phone", if you want the contact to be synchronized with you google contacts.
Argh! This is really annoying me now though -
I've updated my google account with all my contacts from my sim.
The on the phone have gone to People --> Menu --> View --> Google contacts
And that lets me just see my Google contacts in people view (great)
BUT when I hit "Phone" it shows both sim AND google contacts - is there an extra setting that I'm unaware of in the "Phone" section of the phone?
All my previous phones had an option to show only sim or only phone contacts but just can't find it on the Desire...I want to try and avoid deleting the contacts off my sim as I'd like to have a back up.
The only way I can see myself out of this is by exporting onto the memory card and then manually deleting all my sim contacts...which seems a bit of a long way round it. Does anyone else have any other suggestions? Or indeed does anyone else have this same problem?
If it helps, I bought this from CPW PAYG and using my o2 simplicity sim in it.
Thanks!
Do yourself a favour,
Log into google on your pc, and go to contacts, and put ALL your contacts in there.
Then delete them off the phones sim.
It may sound long winded, but once you get the hang off everything being in the cloud, the phone works very well.
All my contacts now have pictures, birthdays, email address's etc on google.com.
And they all automatically appear in my phone, my calender syncs, all my contacts birthdays appear on my phones calender etc,
Fon22
Fon22 said:
Do yourself a favour,
Log into google on your pc, and go to contacts, and put ALL your contacts in there.
Then delete them off the phones sim.
It may sound long winded, but once you get the hang off everything being in the cloud, the phone works very well.
All my contacts now have pictures, birthdays, email address's etc on google.com.
And they all automatically appear in my phone, my calender syncs, all my contacts birthdays appear on my phones calender etc,
Fon22
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep I should just do that - just wanted to see if there were any other options before . I'm guessing that it works both ways - when i add contacts on my phone it'll sync with my google account and add them on there as well right?

Facebook contacts with numbers showing

Hey all,
Just received my Desire and loving it. My only issue so far is that even though I've selected in the People app only to display Google contacts there seems to still be Facebook contacts appearing, albeit only the ones who have entered phone numbers into their Facebook profile.
This causes duplicate entries for the same person in messaging apps (default and Handcent) and in the People app it seems to prefer to show the Facebook contact details rather than the Google ones.
Any ideas?
Thanks
Russ
I have exactly the same problem
are those the contacts that are LINKED to facebook contacts, but not actually facebook contacts?
oh, and you will get du0plicates appearing in third party apps. all that unticking them in people does is hide them in that app. the rest can still see them.
Yes, the linking has happened automatically, unfortunately it doesn't stop the contact showing up twice. For example, I have a friend Hailei, she has an entry in my google contacts with her phone number, this contact is linked to her facebook profile on which she has a fake contact number.
If I create an SMS and type in Hailei as the recipient I get presented with both the real number and her fake facebook number and there's no way to stop this happening. This happens with the standard Messaging app or with Handcent.
in the sms you will get that, yes.
like i said, just because you have hidden the facebook contacts in people, it does NOT hide them in any other application, as they are still downloaded to the phone.
the only way to get rid of the duplicates is to sing out of facebook for HTC sense. not ideal, but hopefuuly it'll get fixed later as it's not an ideal way for it to work.
this is far from ideal esp if numbers match sat tmobiles ie every time they send me a text it date it'd from a contact and my fiancee is then why they sending you texts and I have to show her to prove it. we need to pressure HTC on this to get a fix or at least the ability to delete them from the phones address book. also a side question if anyone knows a way to link the phone button to the people app so o get that come up instead it would be great ie remaping it or something
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
Anybody know anyone with a Nexus One to confirm if this is an Android 2.1 issue or a HTC Sense on 2.1 issue?
It would be nice if you could import the facebook contacts one at a time into your phonebook, not just as a whole.
I was lucky and found out the whole facebook thing as soon as I started my phone, managed to delete my whole contacts, uncheck the facebook contact sync and start again. No more pointless numbers from people I would never want to phone anymore, but means I can't get pictures up for my contacts.
Handcent SMS now has an option to hide social network contacts, although I don't actually have access to that option, it's in the release notes for the latest version which I have but the option in Settings doesn't appear, I'm not alone on this so must be a bug, hopefully quickly fixed and that puts an end to my problems!
roakes said:
Anybody know anyone with a Nexus One to confirm if this is an Android 2.1 issue or a HTC Sense on 2.1 issue?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Syncing Facebook contacts into phonebook is actually a Sense function, i.e. part of the HTC's "People" program.
Yeah, agreed: this is an annoying issue... Just because I want to get Facebook photos for my contacts and their status update does not mean I want ALL their details of EVERY Facebook friend being stored on my phone as a contact.
Even more problematic is how Sense handles phone numbers... It will pull phone numbers from Facebook and (seemingly randomly) may overwrite your setting for their phone number.
Example:
For contact "Bob", you set his phone number as +447900000, however, Bob has his Facebook phone number set as 447900000 (notice how the + is missing, because Bob doesn't know that you need the + there and anyway, who cares, it's only Facebook!)
Well, when Sense syncs the phone numbers, it may very well overwrite Bob's correct phone number (with the + prefix) with his Facebook phone number (which you will be unable to successfully dial)... and there is no way to turn this off without disabling the whole Facebook syncing functionality...
Very annoying!
Yup couldn't agree more. I did a reset like 5 mins after starting the phone, just because I didn't want to see the facebook armada on the list. While yes I did aggree to friend requests from my students ... I don't want to have all 200 of them as contacts in the phone prog ...
[jon] said:
Yeah, agreed: this is an annoying issue... Just because I want to get Facebook photos for my contacts and their status update does not mean I want ALL their details of EVERY Facebook friend being stored on my phone as a contact.
Even more problematic is how Sense handles phone numbers... It will pull phone numbers from Facebook and (seemingly randomly) may overwrite your setting for their phone number.
Example:
For contact "Bob", you set his phone number as +447900000, however, Bob has his Facebook phone number set as 447900000 (notice how the + is missing, because Bob doesn't know that you need the + there and anyway, who cares, it's only Facebook!)
Well, when Sense syncs the phone numbers, it may very well overwrite Bob's correct phone number (with the + prefix) with his Facebook phone number (which you will be unable to successfully dial)... and there is no way to turn this off without disabling the whole Facebook syncing functionality...
Very annoying!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes this is a massive problem for me. is there any solution?
callummc said:
yes this is a massive problem for me. is there any solution?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK so this is what I did, but I have no idea whether it will work for you. I had a specific contact who I simply couldn't dial so I tried to find a solution.
NOTE: This does NOT solve the problem for all contacts, but read on and it may help...
First thing I did was go into my Google Contacts on my computer and deleted all the Facebook metadata in the "notes" section for each contact (as this was already pulled over from my HTC Hero tagging, and it seemed to have a different format.) << so if you are migrating from an older HTC Sense handset, then this may help you but WARNING: this will take a long time to do for each contact, and you will then need to re-associate every contact.
Next thing was to delete all the contact info off my device which you can do by going to Manage Applications > Contacts Storage and delete all the stored info.
Now go to sync settings and hit "Sync All" (or whatever it's called), or just wait and your phone will automatically re-download all of your contacts.
Now... some contacts will automatically get linked to their respective Facebook accounts and some will need to be set manually (I have no idea why they can't ALL be linked automatically, it seems kind of random...)
Anyway, what I have now found is that:
- Any contacts who were linked automatically: my settings override the Facebook settings
- Any contacts who were linked manually: Facebook settings override my settings
Either way, this is incredibly annoying and I think that HTC really do need to provide 2 extra options:
1. To not download ALL Facebook contacts, only to fetch additional attributes for existing contacts
and:
2. To give us greater control over what these attributes are (i.e. I do NOT want all of my contacts random/invalid phone numbers being imported to my device and cluttering everything up, just because I want their image & wall updates...)
I think you have to LINK the person.
I had the same, but when I LINKED the two 'names', it became one. I could choose which name I wanted to use, the Facebook name or the Google entry name.
You told in a previous post that the LINK was automatically done. This is not true. It only suggests, but you have to confirm by clicking the broken chain behind the name. Then it becomes a chain and the two entries becomes one.
I hoped this helps ya all.
I realised mine wasn't automatic, it was just already linked from when I had my Hero, I forgot it stores the link on your google contacts
Workaround:
Not ideal but fixes problematic phonnumber
When you have linked your gmail contact with fb account
Edit your gmail account and add any number as that persons phone.
Now you should see 2 numbers from that person.
Chosse that fake number as primary number.
Now edit gmail contact again and edit fake number with real one.
It will override fb number if it is in wrong format
Not ideal but at least you have proper number for that person
Using Sense 2.0 here.
Apart from the sms number suggestion thing (i can live with it, but is annoying...)
The real problem is that every facebook contact that has a phone number is synced without the + in the area code. This makes all contacts undialable!!! I checked that on facebook via browser the numbers are correct (they are without area code)!
We really need a solution for this problem, a solution that isn't disable facebook people sync (i want to keep photos etc.)

[Q] Contacts at the top of "People" application - Why?

Hi,
I'm hoping someone will be able to answer this one because it's been bugging me since I got the phone 2 months ago.
When I load the "People" application my contact card is at the top, but then there are 5 people listed and then there is the alphabetical list of everyone else - My question is why are these 5 people there? It's always the same 5 people and always in the same "order" (it's not alphabetical). I've attached a screenshot to demonstrate what I mean.
In "View" "Options" I only have the one address book turned on (Exchange ActiveSync) and although I am now using Virtuous 0.9.0, it's not specific to that as I had this same problem with the stock HTC Sense ROM that came with the device (with these same contacts).
I'm not using any groups EXCEPT for favorites, but only "Carrie" and "Richard" (from the screenshot) are in that favorites group (along with 6 other people not shown here). Some of these people are linked to Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, but some are not, I can't seem to find any pattern with them and they're not all in the frequent "auto-group" either.
Because these are contacts in Exchange I've checked the extra data fields in Outlook and I can see the usual XML code for syncing with Facebook/Twitter, but nothing strange specific to these people. I can't find any reference of this in the user manual nor can I find any other threads on this subject either so really hoping someone can help!
Thank you!

[Q] How many want the ability to DISABLE contact sync from main Live account?

Hey
I was just wondering how many of you would like the ability to disable contact and calendar syncing from your main Windows Live account linked to your phone? When I first realized this was the case I immediately hard-reset my phone and made a new Windows Live account just for the phone so I would not have my 300 Live Messenger contacts in my People Hub however, this is not the case for everyone, and this solution has disabled my ability to find my phone from the internet if it is ever lost or stolen.
The point of this thread is sheer curiosity as too how many xda-dev members are affected by this poor choice of implementation.
What is your make-shift solution?
I read so much about all these extra contacts from Facebook e.a., but really don't experience it as a problem whatsoever. I have some 600+ contacts on Exchange, don't know how many on Facebook, and my Windows Live account pulls data from several sources including LinkedIn, totalling some 700.
I have yet to have a single instance where it's a problem. I mean, scrolling through the contact list would certainly be a pain, but there's search.
Before I even got a WP7 phone, I read that there wa sno way to disable contact sync from your Windows Live account so I just created a new one and using that for the time being. It would be nice to have the option to actually disable that part because I wouldn't mind using my normal Live account which is also linked up to my Xbox account, as I don't believe you can change the email on them?
I wish there was an option to do this
It doesn't bother at all. On the contrary that was the opportunity to get rid of all the rubbish contacts I had on Live Messenger and those that I kept I gave their proper ID, not some random childish name they've been using on Messenger. My contacts list actually looks like an adult list now.
There's no way I would create a new Live ID just for that reason as I've been using it for too many years and it's tied to my Xbox and Zune accounts.
I'm fine with the way it is.
By the way I cleaned up my Facebook contacts the same way. No points having hundreds of contacts I don't care about or barely know. My Facebook friends are actual friends and it's much better like that.
Peew971 said:
It doesn't bother at all. On the contrary that was the opportunity to get rid of all the rubbish contacts I had on Live Messenger and those that I kept I gave their proper ID, not some random childish name they've been using on Messenger. My contacts list actually looks like an adult list now.
There's no way I would create a new Live ID just for that reason as I've been using it for too many years and it's tied to my Xbox and Zune accounts.
I'm fine with the way it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Peew971 said:
By the way I cleaned up my Facebook contacts the same way. No points having hundreds of contacts I don't care about or barely know. My Facebook friends are actual friends and it's much better like that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that the implementation is great. With calendar and contacts everything gets synced and you can always set the facebook account to only show data for those in your phone or live account.
About the Facebook settings, its great to have it set like I mentioned above and being able to search them at the same time even without them showing on the All section in the contact list.
I took he same approach as you and went to clean both my Live and Facebook accounts. I have everything synced and working flawlessly for my contacts.
I did the same as others and after realizing how many useless contacts I had in Live I just deleted a bunch. However, that should absolutely not be what Microsoft makes you do if you want to manage your Live contacts with WP7.
I really wish they just gave the same filtering option that Facebook's sync provides. Now I still have some 100 people extra that I want to keep but don't want to see on my phone that I am stuck with.
I assume they do this because of the way email works--if you hid the contacts in the People Hub then you may not be able to email those people using your phone.
OGCF said:
I assume they do this because of the way email works--if you hid the contacts in the People Hub then you may not be able to email those people using your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yea but answer this, how many times have you emailed a friend for a NON-BUSINESS related subject as opposed to IM'ing them or posting on their facebook wall/inbox.
email is dead.
ME!! ME!!!
I don't want to sync ANYTHING from the live account but xbox live stuff and email. I don't want contacts, calendar, etc, etc.
I have an exchange account for that.
It's annoying to see two calendars listed even though I only use the one in my exchange account. It's also useless for me the photos, feeds, etc, etc.
I wish that every single account would let me pick what I actually want to sync.

I find the people app useless. How can I make it useful?

I get tons of phone numbers (IE: [email protected], for example) and people that I've contacted once through gmail or something from things like craigslist. Does google seriously think I'm going to contact a person I bought a lawn mower off of 10 months ago, so they save the number for me? It's so useless, or I'm doing it wrong.
Open the people app. Press the menu list on the bottom right. Choose contacts to display. Then, custom. There you can choose which groups to display.
by default, it will sync with all your contacts from gmail. And gmail, by default, adds every email from every person that you've ever received or sent an email to. But, I highly recommend going into gmail contacts (on your computer), and cleaning up your contacts. and also change the gmail setting so that every email address you send to or get an email from is not automatically added to your contacts. I had never bothered to do that before I got this phone. but the hour or so that I spent cleaning up my contacts in gmail was definitely worth the time and effort.
I find it useful to display only contacts for which you have their phone numbers. Presumably those are the ones you keep closer in touch with. This will sieve away the ones you contact only via gmail, as you mentioned.

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