Database Users

2 outstanding tweaks i cant get on my hd2 (contacts/email pics)

Hi,
i love my hd2 and have worked thought the camera and generic tweaks here. So glad to be away from my omnia and back with a htc and the knowledge here.
I have 2 remaining outstanding tweaks that i havent been able to find decent solutions to by searching here. The first is setting the emails to always show web pictures, i find it frustrating to have to select web pictures eachtime i view an email and as i am on an unlimited data tarriff i dont mind the data. How do i get this to work?
The second is sorting all my contacts by first name then second name. I am not sure if using googlemail as my exchange server, the HTC software or the microsoft sync is changing this but i am pretty tired of going through every day sorting my contacts correctly. Is there a setting somewhere once and for all to force contacts first name and then second name?
As an aside i never sync my phone via usb as i dont use outlook/windows and linux is happy enough pulling everything from googlemail.
Thanks;
Andy

I'll only answer for what I Know.
QUOTE: I am pretty tired of going through every day sorting my contacts correctly. Is there a setting somewhere once and for all to force contacts first name and then second name?
ANSWER: You will enjoy this tiny freeware software that does just that: almost instantly order your contacts by first name (or middle name or last name). Look here for Contact Changer. You run it once and 1 second after, all your contacts are sorted. The downside is that it doesn't change standard setting of the program, which means that the default order will still be LAST NAME first. But since the application is free and quick...

It sounds like your sync source is taking precedence over the phone. If you edit something on the phone and it gets replaced by the backup then that's wrong.
You need to check your server, not the phone.

I have the exact same problem. I don't use data connection (too expensive). There MUST be a way to sort contacts by there first name.... please
Helle

Hi HelleM,
If you go to the contact you want to change, select edit contact. scroll down to the bottom and select more and you can change it with the file as field.
If you can't download the program then you will have to do this with all of your contacts.

Or you could go to marketplace and download Contact Changer by Øystein Kalvø Stephansen. This app allows you to change the sorting in all the contacts. It's very cheap also.

I got it and it works fine. Don't get why HTC did not put that as a choise?

HelleM said:
I got it and it works fine. Don't get why HTC did not put that as a choise?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Aaahhh so many basic things that HTC should heve put as a choise...

So has anyone worked out how i can get outlook email to auto download the pictures for me in emails? It seems a pointless click each time i open an email!

d'oh wrong thread

yeah the email pics issue drives me nuts. it should be a choice in settings somewhere not ask every time. never seen a solution anywhere either. surprising for something that everybody seems to hate and its such a simple little thing, you wold think it'd of been fixed long ago right?

Some things I hate about the EVO

I'm coming from a Touch Pro 2 with a custom 6.5.1 ROM. This is my first go at Android. As I use my device I keep coming across little quirks and things that I don't like. I usually forget for a few hours until that quirk pop-up again. I just thought I would document these things here and see if anyone can provide some input or help.
1) Google Contacts (it sucks)
2) Why does the contact manager want to give me the option for sending a message to all the fax numbers in my contacts (IE: click on a contact, and now I have 4 options for sending a mesage, - cell, fax, office and home - UGH that is SUPER WRONG!!
3)Why sort contacts by the first name.... who does that ??? Why not give an option. (EDIT: found out how to fix this... Thanks!)
4)Why store all the names as just one field, not first name and last name seperately? (EDIT: Found out how to fix this one too.. Thanks!)
5)No option for a display name in contacts
6)Can't edit a contact from "Phone" type to "Google" type. (is it because Google contacts sucks?)
As you may notice, this has a lot to do with contacts, I've been messing with my EVO for a few days now to try and get my contacts straight.... I'll add more stuff as I run across it.

Im pretty sure you can edit your contacts on the evo
...I had windows mobile ...and I hated it. android rocks!!!
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Se
nt via the XDA Tapatalk App

I use phone contacts, not google and i it works fine for me.
1)Never used google contacts
2)This one i agree with
3)The way it is displayed, is the way it is sorted
4)Mine ask me for first and last name seperate
5)Under the tab where it says first and last name it has for dispaly name
6)No idea on, i told it to use phone not google, when i first opened contacts
BWCorvus

I like google contact better then windows...
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Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App

for first and last names, I just type the full name in the "first name" field.

i9000 Facebook contact Sync Error

Hi all,
I am having a big headache with my phone now, please help if you have any idea to solve this, or if you have any idea to track the root cause! Thanks!
This morning when I woke up, I found that most of the profile pictures of my friends lost in the contact list. After a while investigation, I found that only 16 out of 4xx persons in my facebook left in my contact list.
To fix the issue, I tried a re-sync and this can't help. Except the contacts in gmail, only 16 persons in facebook appears in my contact list. I then tried to delete the facebook account in the contact, reboot my device, and add the facebook account again, but same issue happened again. If I choose not to automatically add all friends in my contact, the wizard will pop up exactly 16 friends to let me choose who should i import, but other 4xx friends disappeared.
I have double checked that I did not click "show friends with contact number only". And the strange things is, if i go to "activites" in the contact app, the update of friends that did not show up appeared in activites, and I can provide comment as well.
I am sure there is something wrong in the import process that skipped many of my friends from import. Anyone did try this and have a fix? Or how can I investigate the "log" or something else to pinpoint out the problem? I am afraid that even I hard reset my phone the same issue will exist!

HKcow said:
Hi all,
I am having a big headache with my phone now, please help if you have any idea to solve this, or if you have any idea to track the root cause! Thanks!
This morning when I woke up, I found that most of the profile pictures of my friends lost in the contact list. After a while investigation, I found that only 16 out of 4xx persons in my facebook left in my contact list.
To fix the issue, I tried a re-sync and this can't help. Except the contacts in gmail, only 16 persons in facebook appears in my contact list. I then tried to delete the facebook account in the contact, reboot my device, and add the facebook account again, but same issue happened again. If I choose not to automatically add all friends in my contact, the wizard will pop up exactly 16 friends to let me choose who should i import, but other 4xx friends disappeared.
I have double checked that I did not click "show friends with contact number only". And the strange things is, if i go to "activites" in the contact app, the update of friends that did not show up appeared in activites, and I can provide comment as well.
I am sure there is something wrong in the import process that skipped many of my friends from import. Anyone did try this and have a fix? Or how can I investigate the "log" or something else to pinpoint out the problem? I am afraid that even I hard reset my phone the same issue will exist!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some "update":
I have tried to clear all cache / data in the application setting for "contacts" and "contacts location" and this can't help the situation...

HKcow said:
Some "update":
I have tried to clear all cache / data in the application setting for "contacts" and "contacts location" and this can't help the situation...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please give a hand.. anyone meet this issue?

Same thing with me.. The funny thing is, I can no longer add some of my facebook friends, they are no longer listed on the "Get Friends" menu. The phone thinks that they've already been added.
This happens when facebook sync have errors...
I still can't find a way to get back my missing Facebook friends...

DaRkMyk said:
Same thing with me.. The funny thing is, I can no longer add some of my facebook friends, they are no longer listed on the "Get Friends" menu. The phone thinks that they've already been added.
This happens when facebook sync have errors...
I still can't find a way to get back my missing Facebook friends...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have searched all over the web and seems only you and me have reported this error.
Can we confirm that this issue is caused by "i9000 database has the corrupted friend" rather than "i9000 not able to interpret the facebook list"? To eliminate the issue, I have tried to clear the SNS / Contact / Contact Location cache / data but they still can't help. If this is the case, resetting the phone (but this is my last step) should help.
Could someone specialized in the i9000 data structure to suggest a way to fully clean up the contact database? Maybe this can cater the case if the db is corrupted by sync error!
Thanks!

I have a new friend in facebook today and as expected, the new friend not appear in the list after data-sync, no matter I want to add it later or add it during sync...
Furthermore, com.sec.android.app.sns/snsDB.db contains only the 16 friends in the database, which I suspect the server did not return the remaining contacts?

HKcow said:
I have a new friend in facebook today and as expected, the new friend not appear in the list after data-sync, no matter I want to add it later or add it during sync...
Furthermore, com.sec.android.app.sns/snsDB.db contains only the 16 friends in the database, which I suspect the server did not return the remaining contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have just tried a hard reset and the problem still cannot be solved... I think I need to call samsung support... This seems to be something wrong in the samsung sync server...

Same here, many contacts that sync from facebook are missing.

I don't use fb, so I don't think I can help, but I just wonder if something dumb in the software is going on. So, if you have 16 friends or however many syncing, these friends don't happen to show up elsewhere in your phone or in the cloud. Right? Maybe it has something to do with trying to match up with names you have in your phone book that have a phone number?
Again, just throwing an idea out there, but similar to how you can import all your google contacts or just the ones with a number.
Your friend counts seem awfully low, so if I'm wrong, try to think if there is anything common link between these friends that do get synced. Perhaps they have something in common that can help the sync...

alovell83 said:
I don't use fb, so I don't think I can help, but I just wonder if something dumb in the software is going on. So, if you have 16 friends or however many syncing, these friends don't happen to show up elsewhere in your phone or in the cloud. Right? Maybe it has something to do with trying to match up with names you have in your phone book that have a phone number?
Again, just throwing an idea out there, but similar to how you can import all your google contacts or just the ones with a number.
Your friend counts seem awfully low, so if I'm wrong, try to think if there is anything common link between these friends that do get synced. Perhaps they have something in common that can help the sync...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much for your suggestion... to answer your suggestion:
- I did nto click "show contacts with phone number only"
- I tried to dump the database from SNS, inside the database only the 16 friends exist, other 4xx friends no appeared in the database
- I have phoned samsung and they just request me to send them the phone. Their reply is quite inprofessional as they said if other facebook account is ok, that should be your account issue and saume generally can't help with facebook issue. But I am sure the phone is syncing with a samsung proxy instead of syncing to facebook directly.

I tried many things but nothing can fix this issue.

Ditto, I've tried many different things. Hard reset a few times as well and nothing. Reseated battery and put in a new sim. Perhaps maybe the order of things done is what works. I even tried to sync it before I created my google account. Anybody who has gotten this to work and remember what some of the first steps they did when they got their phone, input would be helpful to try and repeat your process.

if anyone can fix it please let me know how.

What firmware are you'll on? I had this problem with JG1. Flashed to JG5 and the problem's gone. But now my twitter contacts don't update. just two of them appear on my phone
I'm guessing there's a problem with the sync in our phones. I'm just learning to live with it

I have got a solution for this.
The problem is originated from the export error of facebook contact. Here is how I treat the problem:
1. Export your facebook contact using the facebook apps "Export Friends To CSV" (Google it and find the link, I cannot post the link)
2. After you have got the CSV, open it using Excel and check whether there are rows containing more than one contact. Apparently, there is error in the first friend contact info of these rows.
3. Remove those friends from your facebook contact (or ask your friends to fix their info).
4. Resync your Android contact with facebook.
This works for me. Hope this help.
Cheers.

jordenyt said:
I have got a solution for this.
The problem is originated from the export error of facebook contact. Here is how I treat the problem:
1. Export your facebook contact using the facebook apps "Export Friends To CSV" (Google it and find the link, I cannot post the link)
2. After you have got the CSV, open it using Excel and check whether there are rows containing more than one contact. Apparently, there is error in the first friend contact info of these rows.
3. Remove those friends from your facebook contact (or ask your friends to fix their info).
4. Resync your Android contact with facebook.
This works for me. Hope this help.
Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can't find the row that contains more than one contact
edit: oh now i found, the problem is from the last contact that shown in my phone sort by UID from facebook.

First name only on contacts app SENSE PROBLEM

I have a non rooted EVO with froyo, and sense on.
On 2.1 all of my contacts were displayed last name,first name.
SO, in contacts it would say..
Smith, John
now with the 2.2 update and without me changing around any settings it says
John Smith.
I want the last name first, but unfortunetly I cannot change it. The HTC people app doesn't have the option to change it.
I sync my contacts with Exchange and they are all on my outlook at the office, and it has changed the way my contacts look on outlook too, when I try to change it, it just reverts back to first name then last name.
I read and found that with non sense froyo, you can change the order of it, however the HTC People app is different, and did not have that setting.
Also I downloaded a Froyo AOSP version of contacts (from 2.2 ROM) and tried installing it, but got unsuccessful installation. I got the .apk from the CM6 ROM, I was thinking I can just use that app, and change the contacts to display last name, first name.
If anyone can help please let me know.

anyone????

mjz147 said:
anyone????
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am with you!! ANYONE.. HTC Sync seems to have a real mind of its own.. today it said 163 contacts changed on my phone, then 2 minutes later the 163 were different on the phone!
This FIRST LAST is real annoying and it appears to have messed up my Outlook (don't know how good my most recent backup is). But all my display as fields are gone and some on the PC are now showing up as FIRST LAST even though they are set to display and LAST, FIRST.

and if you make a people shortcut for a quick dial it doesn't use the full name anymore just the first.
someone screwed froyo royally

My Guide to Clean Your Contacts *Updated 8/24/10*

Edited 8/24: The new gmail changed this guide and I have attempted to update it. Since my contacts were so clean from when I first wrote this guide, I can't say it's 100% perfect, like it was . I would really like it if people could chime in suggestions for the community!
Please note, this was in the Sticky. In an effort to save a LOT of needed space in the sticky AND to allow new
suggestions I am making this thread. Please let me know if this helps, and if there are other ways to clean up the contacts. Apologies, but I absolutely hate Facebook so others will need to chime in on how to incorporate that, if needed. Alright, on with my guide:
EDIT YOUR CONTACTS (ON YOUR PC FIRST)
If you are new to Android, the first time you logged in it was probably amazing (and frustrating) when you saw ALL of your google contacts sync with your phone.
First things you need to know, google does not allow you to stop the auto-adding of the random people you email to your contacts. Of course, those randoms are now likely showing up in your contact list (hence the frustrating part). Here is how I fixed it:
*please note, if you hide all contacts who do not have a phone number (see below) you can likely skip this, but I included for those who REALLY want to clean up their contacts*
1 - Login to gmail on your PC. Click on "Contacts" on the left border.
2 - Notice you have "My Contacts" (the good) and you have "All Contacts" below that (the bad).
*EDIT* There is no longer a "All Contacts." Google has improved this to now have "Other Contacts." This makes weeding out the people you may not want in your contacts a LOT easier. The next few steps was a workaround that is no longer needed. Simply review these "Other Contacts" and delete those you do not want, and add the ones you do to "My Contacts."
3 - go to the "search contacts" search bar and just enter one SPACE and then press enter.
4 - The middle column will now have your contacts sorted by THE GOOD (My contacts) on top and then THE BAD (All Contacts) below that. You may have more tiers, but I am keeping it simple for illustration.
5 - Scroll all the way down to the bad list. Review the names. Some may be legit people you just have not added to your My Contacts list yet.
6 - If you have a hard time recalling who someone is, you can click on their name and then click on the link "view recent conversations." This shows any previous email exchanges so you can decide to either delete or add them.
7 - Work through this list. I would suggest deleting them as you go, but not adding them to your My Contacts list until the very end (to prevent from having to do step 3 over and over). To add a contact to your "My Contacts" I just click on their name, edit their info and it showed up automatically. I did not need to click anything like "Add to...." etc.
8 - Okay, great. Lets assume you got rid of all the clutter. NOW, go to your My Contacts.... click on the "More Actions" button and then "Find & Merge Duplicates". If you have any, fix them... no reason to have several entries for the same person.
9 - Now just review the My Contacts list and make any edits or format changes. I am Type A, so you could only imagine how clean your Android Contact list is about to appear.
Great, enough with the PC. Go to your Vibrant.
Chances are it is already synching up with the changes you made.
The phone came with a bunch of #s stored on the Phone and SIM stock, I could care less about these. If you agree:
1 - Open Contacts. Press menu, go to "Display Options"
2 - Uncheck Phone and SIM (others may not agree, I just dont see the point), leaving Google as the only one checked.
*Also* You can also Delete these by long-pressing on them (wish I believe I did, and then unchecked them to now show... of course, they were deleted, so....)
Alright, almost there now. As it is, you have removed a LOT of clutter, but you may still have a ton of contacts. That is because, by default the Contacts app shows All contacts, even if they do not have a phone number. Now again, this is a personal choice.... but if I need to call someone, I would rather not have to deal with people listed who I do not have a phone number for. Also, if I am emailing them, I am using gmail, not Contacts (so again, not needed). IF you agree:
1 - Open Contacts, Press Menu and go to "Display Options."
2 - The top will say something to the affect of, check here if you only want to show contacts with phones.... Click it. Then click Done.
3 - Bam, your Contacts may not be perfect (like mine), but I bet they look a ton better. I tried to point out there is a lot of personal preferences, so please take this with a grain of salt. I like things clean.
Please read the sticky for other tips/tricks for contacts AND many other topics. Thanks for everyone helping!

You're the best. Thanks.

Great, thanks for this!
If only I'd seen it before muddling through the new contacts screens for hours getting it to work it would have saved me a lot of time.
Only comment is that step 3:
"go to the "search contacts" search bar and just enter one SPACE and then press enter."
Doesn't seem to work on the new gmail contacts screen, when I do this search it just takes me to the my contacts page. I had to click 'older contact manager' link at the bottom of the screen and then do the blank search. Also step 4, with the new interface you don't get the middle columns. Any ideas on how you'd sort the contacts with the new interface? I'm not sure how long the link to the old contacts manager will be around for...
Thanks for taking the time to draw this up.

Another great "clean up" tool is Merge contacts. After updating my Treo contacts into gMail, Find dups was not enough.
Merge is more of a manual action, but it is great to look at the entire list to see whats going on.
At the same time, "groups" is another manual action that can help organize "YOUR" (good list) contacts. At times, I had contacts lists from other peoples PDAs and phones on my treo (mine was reliable, theirs', not so much, so when they crashed and lost their contacts, i could beam their list to them).
Hope I helped someone

Anyone know how to get facebook pics to show up for contacts? When I first got this phone all my contacts who are on my facebook had their pics synced up. Not anymore though, and idk why. Fb still syncs in the updates column but not their pics.
Anyway, thanks for the guide.

The way I found that works is to follow the above instuctions (other than that I kept both the gmail friends as well as all my facebook friends and then chose to display only those with a phone.) You can then go through each contact without a photo and click on it (the one without a photo). This is the gmail contact, choose "link contact" and the Facebook contact comes up (note that this method assumes that your favorite contacts are also on facebook with a photo, if not you will need to get your own picture with your phone or camera). Again, this is assuming you have your contact as a facebook friend AND a gmail email friend.
I hope this makes sense. Good Luck

Hey, thanks for the comments. Yeah... The new gmail changed this guide and I need to update it. Will try and work on it soon. If you guys can keep making recommendations that would be awesome.

Do you know of a way to *remove* all SIM contacts on the phone? When transferring from my old phone I dumped to SIM and then loaded onto the Android device, then I dumped that to a CSV and merged it with gmail. That got things sorted out on the gmail end, however I now have a bunch of redundant SIM contacts.
Even if you uncheck SIM contact visibilityin the contact app, they do still exist, and they show up elsewhere. So far I've seen no way to actually get rid of all of them easily, short of manually removing them one at a time

I also like using the app "Contacts clean-up" to auto format all the numbers up be consistent. ;-)
Sent from my Samsung Vibrant

Jeremy, did you see if there were duplicates on the pc within gmail?
Sent from my Vibrant

Okay, I made an attempt to correct my guide for the new Gmail. I really did not have much to play with this time, so please let me know if there needs to be any changes or improvements made.
Thank you guys!

Remember the days?
Did anyone else make a complete different Phone list within google contacts, and only use this list as the list for your phone? This was on my G1.
I'm trying to figure out why we can't do that anymore. Kinda sucks

s15274n said:
Jeremy, did you see if there were duplicates on the pc within gmail?
Sent from my Vibrant
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No dupes in gmail itself, just the dupe sim contacts. Gmail did a good job handling the dupes that I had in my gmail account.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App