Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Information and help in the IT field of computers, internet, ISP's, mobile and fixed line telephones plus satellite TV systems.
Granite
Andalucia.com Amigo
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu Feb 07, 2013 4:01 pm
Location: N.W. Galicia

Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby Granite » Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:24 pm

I have recently acquired my first Smartphone, a Moto G 2nd Gen. I have been through the pain of trying to merge contacts in the form of telephone numbers from the old phone and email addresses from two Hotmail accounts. In addition I now have a Gmail account. Currently I have a reasonably acceptable format of contacts on the phone, through a process of adding/editing on the phone, ditto on contacts in Windows Live Mail. I have just exported these to the phone SD card and imported them to Gmail. This I cleaned from the internet is good practice as you will always have a backup and auto synching will ensure what is on Gmail is current and safe in case the phone is lost etc.

What arrived in the contacts on Gmail when viewed from my PC bore no resemblance to the contacts list on the phone. Furthermore, when researching the whole issue of managing smartphone contacts on the internet there seem to be an awful lot of unhappy people with nightmare stories of losing all their contacts, synching resulting in numerous duplicates etc.

A phone with phone numbers and a PC with email addresses never caused these problems! Or is it just me?

Tips, advice, reference to an amazing app that sorts it all out would be gratefully received.

Lyric
Andalucia Guru
Posts: 2532
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 12:36 pm
Location: Torrox Campo

Re: Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby Lyric » Mon Aug 31, 2015 6:00 pm

I had great difficulty with most contacts on my original phone only exportable as CSV. So I had Thunderbird contacts, old contacts from an ancient Motorola flip phone and Gmail contacts.

I sorted everything out in Gmail which will find duplicates too and once I had it all ok in Gmail deleted the list on the Smartphone and then synced the phone to Gmail. Works beautifully and I only add contacts to the phone, they sync to Gmail. I also use a Gmail calendar and that syncs to the phone, wouldn't be without it now.

alpineSi
Andalucia.com Amigo
Posts: 182
Joined: Fri Aug 14, 2015 3:00 pm
Location: Esp

Re: Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby alpineSi » Mon Aug 31, 2015 6:53 pm

Android tends to take all your contact details from various accounts (Livemail, Gmail, Facebook, Linkedin, WhatsApp etc...) and merge them, so you see that person's name just the once on your phone but with the details consolidated. If you look at your Gmail account on a PC you will only see the details saved specifically to your Google account, not the details that have been saved to a myriad of other accounts.

To make things easier in one respect, my recommendation is that whenever you save a new number to your phone and it asks you if you'd like to save the number to the phone memory or your Google Account, you select Google Account. That way any changes made will be reflected and saved online; if you lose the phone you only need to log into Google with your new one and the contacts will re-appear. Any details you save to SIM or phone memory will be lost with the phone.

Lyric
Andalucia Guru
Posts: 2532
Joined: Fri May 16, 2008 12:36 pm
Location: Torrox Campo

Re: Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby Lyric » Mon Aug 31, 2015 7:01 pm

Well I don't have any of that junk so my life is simple Gmail and phone.

El Cid
Andalucia Guru
Posts: 16058
Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:42 pm
Location: La Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada

Re: Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby El Cid » Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:14 pm

I have to say this, but this is where Apple is streets ahead when it comes to synching contacts etc in the iCloud.

Sid

User avatar
rafiki
Resident
Posts: 1923
Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 2:42 pm
Location: Seville

Re: Android Phone - Managing Contacts

Postby rafiki » Tue Sep 01, 2015 8:10 pm

I occasionally use MyPhoneExplorer to sort out my contacts.
http://www.fjsoft.at/en/
Brian.


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests