Can I exclude some contacts or better yet remember the category view.I want to exclude the tons of people I email but don't call often from the sync to my wm5/8525 or is there a way to get my contacts display to remember the category's i want to exclude.
Every time I close out the contacts all the contacts go back to the huge list, then i have to go back to exclude or just picking the category i want then pick the person or contact.
I don't want to maintain 2 separate contact lists and I don't see an option to exclude a contact from the sync..or to get wm5 to rember the category view after I close it.
thanks guys
Tiffany
This May Not Be A Full Solution
There's a third-party software out there that manages your contacts. I don't know if you can selectively sync, but it does have the "remember last category viewed" feature.
Download the Inesoft Address Book here:
http://handheld.softpedia.com/get/Business/Address-book/Inesoft-Address-Book-12795.shtml
I've never used it so caveat emptor. Has anybody out there used it before?
Thanks,
WASSIM
I have downloaded all my phone numbers from my Sim card to the phone. My phone has picked up my email addresses through Windows live sync. Some are duplicates and some are irrelevant. I can't find a way to delete contacts (email address or phone numbers) on the phone. The bottom line is I need to delete a lot of duplicates and unwanted contacts from my phone. I can't find a delete function anywhere in the menu and I can't find any documentation, anywhere within the complete 200 page manual. In addition, I need to edit almost every contact/phone number amd everytime I go to edit an existing contact, I can't keep the phone from dialing that number. I know I am smart phone challenged, but this is getting rediculous. I'm obviously missing something simple on both accounts. Thanks in advance and thanks for yor help on my earlier posts. I was able to solve all the problems you all helped have me with!!!
See attached thread......http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=511105. Some options mentioned.
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
I just got a Nexus One and am using the CyanogenMod (although I also have this problem with Enomther's ROM). It seems like a silly question, but for the life of my I can't add contacts to the favorites list in the phone app.
If I choosed the add to favorites option, in the context menu, in the contacts list. It appears to work, but then the contact does not appear in the favorites list. Alternatively, if I go to specific contact and hit the star, to make it yellow, still nothing happens. It doesn't appear in my favorites and the next time I go to that contact the star isn't yellow anymore.
Am I missing something completely obvious? Thanks for any help.
[Oops, sorry I guess I should have put this question in the Nexus One Q&A section. I'd delete it and redo it but don't see an option to delete the thread. If a moderator would move this I'd be grateful.]
I have several entries for almost all of my contacts. Same, correct numbers, not doubled, multipled.
I do ROM flashing, I do NAND backups prior to that which I usually go back to. (this may already of course contain the multiple entries)
I always do a full wipe, even dalvik before flashing.
This doesn't slow my phone or so, it is just annoying having 5-6 of telephone entries and 5-6 Google entries for the same contacts.
They show as one, because they are linked of course. When I go to editing I just have so many to delete.
Anyone else having this? Any way to clean the mess?
One of the underutilized feature of Android is that the contact book is synced to Gmail Contacts and it can be edited there (with your keyboards and with extra features)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#contacts
You can choose the duplicated entries, then choose More => Merge Contacts
Or, you can do the lazy way, which is More => Find and Merge Duplicates
In any case, your contacts books in also in the aforementioned link, and you can manage it on a computer, using a web interface, much much easier than managing in the the phone. I have around 500 contacts and it took me 2 hours to fine tune my contacts book to my taste.
Edit: By the way, after you have done that, allow the phone to have 2-3 to sync with the gmail contacts. Then it is set.
moolash said:
I have several entries for almost all of my contacts. Same, correct numbers, not doubled, multipled.
I do ROM flashing, I do NAND backups prior to that which I usually go back to. (this may already of course contain the multiple entries)
I always do a full wipe, even dalvik before flashing.
This doesn't slow my phone or so, it is just annoying having 5-6 of telephone entries and 5-6 Google entries for the same contacts.
They show as one, because they are linked of course. When I go to editing I just have so many to delete.
Anyone else having this? Any way to clean the mess?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
KyraOfFire said:
One of the underutilized feature of Android is that the contact book is synced to Gmail Contacts and it can be edited there (with your keyboards and with extra features)
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#contacts
You can choose the duplicated entries, then choose More => Merge Contacts
Or, you can do the lazy way, which is More => Find and Merge Duplicates
In any case, your contacts books in also in the aforementioned link, and you can manage it on a computer, using a web interface, much much easier than managing in the the phone. I have around 500 contacts and it took me 2 hours to fine tune my contacts book to my taste.
Edit: By the way, after you have done that, allow the phone to have 2-3 to sync with the gmail contacts. Then it is set.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks. I've heard this from others, too, sound obvious.
I have multiple entries in the "Telephone" category, too, not just google.
To describe it (and my original problem) better, some entries are just empty, like an empty text field and then "telephone" or "google" next to it. but there's no number in the box, and you can delete the entry by pressing the "x" after it.