Database Users

phone contacts deleted after synching?????

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...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.

My Contacts VS. All Contacts

I think this is the answer many of us are looking for to only have My Contacts Sync not all contacts.
Go to People->Menu->View->uncheck "Show auto Gmail Contacts" and "Google"
So you should only have Only contacts with phone #'s and Phones if you want.
Also here is a link to the Google Gmail Contact help section discussing this problem with 1.5 so a few things you will notice are different.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=3836f88898c31b01&hl=en
Hope this helps.

This solved the problem of syncing just My Contacts. This will not sync all contacts!

when i do it, it doesn't do anything.
with "Google" unchecked, the accounts sync doesn't do anything because the People app isn't even searching through my Google account for the contacts (but it is checked in the Data & Synchronization setting screen)

If Google is selected then it will pull All Contacts, The only downside to syncing Only contacts with #'s is if you only email someone they wont show.
See, Google expects you to keep your contact list clean and in good order. They figure that if you have a contact in all contact then you probably want them on all synced devices. So if you want it to work a different way you have to be tricky. This is an amazing phone and Android does have some limitations but we can't have everything. I also think that people would start complaining that this contact or that contact is on their phone if Android had to many options and one got switched on accident. So this is my work around and anyone that i know that I contact that doesn't have a # I put in a bogus one and then they show up.

i have a more shoddy way of working around it, though i'm experience problems with contact sync in general right now
what you could do is just use another Google account and use that one to solely sync your contacts. just export from your main account and import to the contact only one, and sync from there
however, my problem right now is that the phone won't do any sort of contact sync at all with contacts. anyone know why this might be?

Did you flash the 2.1 file? If so try to reinstall it.

[Q] Contacts annoyances (with GMail)

Hi,
I'm a bit annoyed by the way the Galaxy S works with Contacts:
All contacts are synced to Gmail instead of My Contacts
Gmail Groups are not synced, all Gmail contacts are in one group
No easy way to convert phone contacts to Google contacts or to merge contacts into a google contact
Essentially, I want to use GMail exclusively to manage contacts and have all of them synced between GMail and the phone.
I would appreciate any suggestions on how to achieve this, or maybe there is a better Contacts app out there?

This is not SGS issue, but the Android platform has been designed in the way that it's cloud computing centralised, in this case, Android phone is just the "client", you still need to maintain your contact in Gmail (web).
I tried delete a GMail contact in the phone, but that action will not delete the Gmail contact in Gmail server, sadly.

I've searched for solutions and found that the first two issues are solved on some phones, but that the Samsung Galaxy does not have the option to change the sync behaviour.
I want to maintain my contacts in GMail, but the problem is that the phone does not respect the GMail groups and it syncs "All contact", which means everyone I ever sent a mail. It should sync "My contacts", which only contains Contacts I created in GMail.
I hoped that there is maybe an alternative contacts app that does what I want.

_Fabian_ said:
I want to maintain my contacts in GMail, but the problem is that the phone does not respect the GMail groups and it syncs "All contact", which means everyone I ever sent a mail. It should sync "My contacts", which only contains Contacts I created in GMail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was also annoyed by that fact. But fortunately you can select to display only contacts with phone numbers associated in the contacts
application.
Just hit menu button while showing the list of contacts -> Display options -> only contacts with phones.
This at least solved my major issue with the google synching. Nice: typeahead in the gmail app still works for all people you ever sent a mail.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Try this , it did the trick for me

_Fabian_ said:
I hoped that there is maybe an alternative contacts app that does what I want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried Contacts Evolved in the Market. It is a littly buggy, not even sure if it is actively supported. But it does display Gmail contact groups, segregated in tabs.
The actual syncing is still being done by the brain dead Samsung Contacts app, which cannot be uninstalled. It apparently does download the groups data element from Gmail contacts, but fails to do anything with it.

When I tried jp3 2.2 firmware the google groups showed, looks like it will be fixed in the 2.2 update.

Thanks for the answers. Displaying only contacts with phone numbers helps, and if the group thing is fixed in Froyo, thats alright for me.
Now I only need to convert my phone contacts to Google contacts, there should be an easy options like Phone to SIM and vice versa, but I could not find it. Looks like I may have to do it by hand.

This is like the only bad thing for me. Do more people confirm that it is fixed in Froyo?

[Q] HELP - Major Sync Issues with Google Calender - Android 2.1 - Samsung Vibrant

I thought it would be a great idea to sync my work outlook account with Google calendar via Google sync on the desktop.
I synced my outlook to Google calendar just find until I realized that there is no option to select a sub calendar so it synced thousands of events from my outlook to my primary calendar in Google.
Since my Google calendar account is also synced with my phone, my phone now has thousands of events with out the ability to toggle them getting my personal and work calenders all in one.
I went into Google via web, and deleted ALL events and wiped everything clean. I wanted my phone to also be clean. When I synced my phone the changes did not reflect what I did on the web.
I forced synced for the past 8 hours, and turned the phone off twice since then.
I found that it is syncing but not removing the old events. I change the calendar name in the web and it also changes it on my phone. But it never removes all those thousands of events off my phone.
Another test revealed that if I add an event on my phone, it will sync to the web.
If I add an event it will sync to my phone.
If I delete an event on my phone, it will delete it off the web.
Here is the issue, if I delete an event off the web, it does not delete it off my phone.
How can I remove these thousands of entries on my phone now?
I cannot remove my Google account and re-sync because when I tried it said my only option is to factory reset which I prefer not to do.
Thanks.

Try to change your google account password on web. When your phone won't sync then remove that account and add a new account but you can still use the same account name. I hope I make sense.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

[Q] Sharing a Google account on multiple phones

I imagine quite a few people have set up multiple Android phones for their immediate family, and I'm looking for suggestions.
I have three myTouch 4Gs (one for each family member). We each have our own Google account and we also have a "family" Google account, which I am planning to use for shared contacts and calendars. Each person will also want their own calendar and contacts.
Should I first configure each phone to use the "family" account, and then add each person's "user" account to the phone for contacts and calendar? If I do this will each phone automatically sync the shared contacts & calendar and then the individual user's contacts & calendar?
Can Android handle this or is this a bad idea?
BTW I'm aware that one user can own the calendars and share them with the other users (that's what I do now for the iPhone), but I don't believe the same can be done for contacts, can it?
Thanks ... Mike

Either way, Android can handle multiple Google accounts since 2.x update.

You need to set them up using the one you want as default first. Theres no way to change this afterwards.

@option94 - thanks. What would br the downside of having a particular account be the default? Would it only affect the Market? Or does Gmail always use the default account for sending, even if (say) you are replying to a message sent to your non-default account.
@borodin1 - thanks.

I dont recall who, but someone had an issue with it. I believe it was something to do with calendar. And you are correct about the market.

option94 said:
I dont recall who, but someone had an issue with it. I believe it was something to do with calendar. And you are correct about the market.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So one more thing occurred to me as I was playing around with these phones trying to get them set up "right" the first time. If all three have the same default Google account, what happens with the "Back up data with my Google Account" option? If enabled, would each phone clobber the others' backup? That wouldn't be good.
Thanks again.
Mike

Thats one that I haven't run into. I would hope that they would all sync with each other, but then you would be sharing contacts and such among all three phones.

Thanks for the info. I'm going to set them up as follows and see how it goes:
All phones - set up "family" Google account first (which means they will all share the same Market account). Sync calendar only. Turn off "Back up data with my Google Account".
Individual phones - set up the individual's Google account second, and sync contacts and mail.

Sounds good. Let us know how it goes.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Is there a way to clear the Calendar cache without doing a Factory data reset?
I didn't like the idea of the other two family members being able to manage the calendars, so I decided to switch to the following setup (only tried on mine so far):
All phones - set up "family" Google account first (which means they will all share the same Market account). Sync none of calendar, contacts, and mail. Turn off "Back up data with my Google Account".
Individual phones - set up the individual's Google account second, and sync calendar, contacts, and mail.
However ... Even after forcing several syncs and a reboot, the built-in calendar still only lets me choose calendars from the "family" account, not from my individual account. CalWidget lets me choose from both sets of calendars (the "family" set and my individual set, but if I choose my individual set it doesn't display any entries. And Jorte doesn't tell me whether it's getting entries from the "family" or "individual" calendar.
Since the "Family" calendars are shared (read-only) to the individuals they have the same names in both "family" and "individual". I suspect I have confused Android, and am looking for a way to clear out whatever cached information it might have.
Suggestions appreciated.
Thanks ... Mike

wenglish said:
Thanks for the info. I'm going to set them up as follows and see how it goes:
All phones - set up "family" Google account first (which means they will all share the same Market account). Sync calendar only. Turn off "Back up data with my Google Account".
Individual phones - set up the individual's Google account second, and sync contacts and mail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been doing this for a few months. I don't sync anything with the family account though, I just use it for the Market. I would like to know if the Back Up data with my Google Account option will clobber or replicate settings among multiple phones, or if it's smart enough to store the settings and link them to the SIM card ID or something.
Otherwise, it works great.

signal15 - I have run into a problem with the setup I described (and which you are also using I believe). Do you have multiple calendars owned by the "family" (shared) account? If so, are they still displaying OK?
In my case the "family" account has multiple calendars and shares them to the three family members' gmail accounts.
On phone 1 (mine) I am syncing only the calendars in my personal gmail account (which are shared out from the family calendar). Up to last night it worked OK (showing all the calendars), but as of last night all those calendars (except for the default calendar of my personal gmail account and the defaulty calendar of the family account) have disappeared from the phone - I can't see them listed in the settings where you get to see which calendars should be displayed.
Phones 2 and 3 are syncing the calendars in the family gmail account (which is the owner of the calendars), and they are working OK (so far).
One of the annoying aspects of all this is that you're never sure whether something went wrong on the phone, or at Google's end.

I fixed the problem of disappearing calendars, by following steps from the Pimlical forum.
I needed to force stop Calendar Sync Adapter and clear data & force stop Calendar Storage, then do a sync all.
I have my calendars back, but I really don't want to have to be doing this periodically. I really expected better from Google (I'm particularly annoyed at them right now because I recently discovered there's a long-term "functional anomaly" that prevents appointments more than a couple of months old from syncing to the phone).

This won't help with contact syncing but you can share a calendar with full read write privileges with multiple accounts already in google calendar. I believe you have to set it up from the desktop version of the Google calendar website but after that it works perfectly with your phones.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App