When it syncs your phone's contacts with your gmail contacts, which way does it replace? For example if you have the same contact in your phone and gmail but a different phone number for each, which one will it keep? And if you delete contacts from one but not the other, will it delete them on the other or will it sync them right back as if you never deleted them?
Seems to be quite random, actually.
I had a problem when I disabled sync on my G1 for two weeks, and when I enabled it, all the contacts I added to it during that time got erased.
So, be careful and back up your contacts often (from the google.com/contacts interface).
Supposedly, it merges the contacts. So if you have a new number for a contact on phone, it should update the gmail contact, and vice versa. and since it supports multiple mobile numbers (almost infinite numbers of each kind), there shouldn't be any deletion involved.
ady said:
So if you have a new number for a contact on phone, it should update the gmail contact, and vice versa.
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So what if someone steals my phone and erases all my contacts, will it see that I've erased them on the phone and in turn erase them from my gmail contacts too? Or will it keep syncing them back onto the phone?
Usually I update/erase phone numbers on the phone itself, whereas I update email address through gmail when I'm checking my email (although sometimes I add them through the phonebook in the phone). I'm curious how the sync application "knows" which one is newer (ie. what happened most recently) - maybe it attaches a hidden timestamp to every piece of a contact?
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Ever since I got my Magic, and because I didn't like the feature very much, I had the "sync contacts" option to off. I manually entered all the phone numbers & email I had, and was fine with it.
Then, today, I thought "oh, wth, i'll turn contact sync so that my gmail will also have my phone numbers and they'll be safe". little did I know.
For some inexplicable reasons, when synchronizing ended, my phone had downloaded all my google contacts BUT it had completely wiped out my existing phone contacts. At the "view" option in contacts, under the "phone" contacts it shows 0, and it does not recognise my call log or my sms list as sent by known numbers. Oh, and my phone contacts (neither the ones I had before sync, nor the couple I just entered after all this) do NOT show up in my google contacts AT ALL.
Is there any way at all to undo this? I want my phone contacts back!
Also, is this some sort of bug or error or does sync reallly wipe out all your phone contacts? if so, WHY THE HELL does it do that? I thought synch would be upload phone contacts to gmail, download gmail contacts to phone, keep all of htem in both places. isn't that the point?
In sort, why did this happen? I'm pretty sure it never asked me if I wanted to keep my phone contacts or anything...
It is strange that the contacts are removed from the phone.
My coincidence, yesterday just to check what was going to happen, I added a contact to my phone and I select the source as Google. Then I sync and went to the Gmail but no contact was present.
I closed google and open again the web page and now it appears. So it was a refresh/cache issue.
Only the contacts I've sync via HTC were set to Phone mode and I couldn't change them to Google so they were untouch on the phone and never went to google contacts.
contacts are wiped
surfmadpig said:
Ever since I got my Magic, and because I didn't like the feature very much, I had the "sync contacts" option to off. I manually entered all the phone numbers & email I had, and was fine with it.
Then, today, I thought "oh, wth, i'll turn contact sync so that my gmail will also have my phone numbers and they'll be safe". little did I know.
For some inexplicable reasons, when synchronizing ended, my phone had downloaded all my google contacts BUT it had completely wiped out my existing phone contacts. At the "view" option in contacts, under the "phone" contacts it shows 0, and it does not recognise my call log or my sms list as sent by known numbers. Oh, and my phone contacts (neither the ones I had before sync, nor the couple I just entered after all this) do NOT show up in my google contacts AT ALL.
Is there any way at all to undo this? I want my phone contacts back!
Also, is this some sort of bug or error or does sync reallly wipe out all your phone contacts? if so, WHY THE HELL does it do that? I thought synch would be upload phone contacts to gmail, download gmail contacts to phone, keep all of htem in both places. isn't that the point?
In sort, why did this happen? I'm pretty sure it never asked me if I wanted to keep my phone contacts or anything...
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I have the same problem on my Google Nexus 5 device. I connect to Internet through a VPN and while connecting save a contact, surprisingly the contact was not deleted. I think it might be a serious bug. And I totally agree with the process of saving contact that you mentioned in your comment. The correct saving should save contact on phone and after synchronizing, contacts on the phone shall be uploaded on google contact. There should be a good harmony. But the present relationship between phone and google is damaging the contacts which are not saved before on your google account.
Hi,
Summary: I used Google sync without thinking, ending up with a mixture of e-mail contacts and phone contacts on my phone and on gmail. Could use some help separating them again.
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I have synchronised my X10 contact list with the Sony Ericsson sync service (website).
I also have a gmail account. Some days ago I added my computer's e-mail address book to that account.
Yesterday I decided to sync my phone with gmail (by selecting the following on the phone: settings - data sync - google sync). I simply wanted to upload my phone's contact list to gmail. I didn't consider that ALL my e-mail contacts would be added to the phone. I don't need those there...
So, any advice on how to get rid of all the e-mail contacts that google added to my phone?
At the moment, my complete contact list (the one I would like to maintain) exists at SE sync service.
In gmail's contact list, I can select all the e-mail contacts, and probably delete them. However, gmail's list only contains 60% of the contacts that were originally on my phone (of course I would like to keep 100%).
I am thinking about deleting all contacts from gmail and from the phone, and downloading them from SE sync service. Does that work they way I'm hoping? I'm a bit worried about losing my phone contacts from SE sync service.
Any advice?
Also, is there a way to set up gmail contact list so that the phone's contacts stay in one folder, while e-mail contacts stay in another folder?
(I do have some "phone contacts" with e-mail addresses, some "e-mail contacts" with phone numbers, etc, which might complicate things.)
murmeljenta said:
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So, any advice on how to get rid of all the e-mail contacts that google added to my phone?
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If you go to Phonebook>Menu (left button)>Display group (or something similar)>Contacts with phonenumber , then all contacts without a nummer will be hidden.
Vin87 said:
If you go to Phonebook>Menu (left button)>Display group (or something similar)>Contacts with phonenumber , then all contacts without a nummer will be hidden.
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Thanks for the tip... However, I do have some "phone contacts" with e-mail addresses, some "e-mail contacts" with phone numbers. I don't need all those contacts twice.
murmeljenta said:
Thanks for the tip... However, I do have some "phone contacts" with e-mail addresses, some "e-mail contacts" with phone numbers. I don't need all those contacts twice.
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Merging these contacts on gmail.com>contacts using your computer would be the easiest and fastest thing to do I guess.
Or make a new group in the gmail contacts and transfer all your phonecontacts to that group, then let the x10 only show the contacts in the new group.
When I try to create a new contact, either manually or after I receive call from a new number, I see option to store on Phone/GMail/SIM. It always defaults to GMail.
1) I don't use GMail and so I don't need it. What's the point of doing so? maybe it is just that it will be synced with GMail contacts?
2) Gmail contacts list is empty, meaning that all my contacts that were synced from Outlook, are phone contacts and not Gmail contacts. Am I correct?
3) And if I am correct, how can I change the default behaviour? to always store on phone by default instead of Gmail?
If you use the Market you need a Google account, whether or not you use it for email is your choice.
If you think of the Gmail account as a safe way to store your contacts online.
If you were unfortunate enough to lose or have your DHD stolen then you lose all your contacts stored on the phone & SIM.
Other than choosing the other options from the drop down menu, I don't know of any other way.
andyharney said:
If you use the Market you need a Google account, whether or not you use it for email is your choice.
If you think of the Gmail account as a safe way to store your contacts online.
If you were unfortunate enough to lose or have your DHD stolen then you lose all your contacts stored on the phone & SIM.
Other than choosing the other options from the drop down menu, I don't know of any other way.
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Yes, I hamy gmail account just for the market.
If I lose my phone, etc., all my contacts are still in Outlook and hence in all of my backups.
So if this is the only benefit of storing contacts in gmail, how can I change default behaviour to phone?
andreasy said:
how can I change default behaviour to phone?
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You can't.
Then, what would be the difference if for some new contacts I forget to change to phone and for some I don't and as a result, half my contacts are in gmail and half in phone?
I don't understand your question, as you seemed to answer it yourself.
If you forget to change where the contact is saved then the contact will be added to your Gmail contacts.
They will still appear in your contact list as normal.
I have my contacts synced with my Google account, but it throws every single email/number I have ever used/sent email to the phone. If I try to send a text and push a particular letter, I get every single email address that starts with that letter and then I get various contacts information. That's a bit too much information.
I don't know how I had it synced with my iPhone, but if I push "A" then it only gives me the contacts that I have (which are synced with my Google account) phone numbers* for my texts app. On email, it will first bring up the most contacted (that what it seems like) beginning with that letter.
On the G2, I get the same entire list in no particular order for both the text and email app. I can't seem to only include just the contacts that I had on the iPhone previously. * I did figure out how to disable it showing contacts without numbers, so my call list now looks correct, but is still a mess when I try to send a text/email.
Does this make sense?
Essentially:
On the text app-- I only want the numbers of my contacts that have been synced with Google that phone numbers. These are the contacts I have located on google.com/contacts.
On the email app-- I would prefer to only have the email contacts that I often communicate on top of the list, but if that's not possible, I can live with typing in more letters to fine tune my address.
The first part is killing me. I don't want to have to type out the contact's name when sending a text when I'm used to doing it one (sometimes two) letters previously.
I had also tried to sync my FB account but quickly undid that since it just added all my Facebook friends on there (a lot of them have numbers, but I don't want them on my phone). With iPhone, it would only sync information/picture if I had that contact already on my Google contacts and on my phone.
Should I just wipe the phone and resync again? I just got it, so there's no real data on it for me lose. Would that solve anything?
Another newb question to the Samsung. My contacts are an absolute nightmare and I can't figure out how to get them under control. I went in and disabled (I think) sync on as many things as I could find (exchange, facebook, etc). I also went through and manually deleted a bunch of contacts I didn't want. Went in there today and BOOM. Contacts are a chaotic mess again. How do I fix this? How can I mass delete contacts and start over if it comes down to that?
#frustrated ex-apple person here.
Facebook always screws mine up, so I never sync it ever.
I'd just sync your google ones and then go fix them on contacts.google.com
NomadRT said:
Another newb question to the Samsung. My contacts are an absolute nightmare and I can't figure out how to get them under control. I went in and disabled (I think) sync on as many things as I could find (exchange, facebook, etc). I also went through and manually deleted a bunch of contacts I didn't want. Went in there today and BOOM. Contacts are a chaotic mess again. How do I fix this? How can I mass delete contacts and start over if it comes down to that?
#frustrated ex-apple person here.
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You need to disable sync on all the apps. Contact can be sync from Gmail, Facebood, Google+ etc.. Make sure you go into each and stop all the sync, then delete all the existing contacts (most of them just have email address with no phone number associate), then restore your original contact list. If you don't have the original contact list then you need to modify your current one to your liking, then export it out to your sdcard. This will be your core original list. In the future if anything happened to your contact list, you can easily delete all then import your original list and you're back. The quickest way, is to select display only "phone" contact then other none phone number contacts will disappear when you open contact.
You can tell the phone which contacts to display by account. I have mine set to only display Google. This way I don't have to worry about what syncs and doesn't, and can link the contacts between accounts so it'll show their Facebook picture for them.