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Can't delete old contacts

J

Joesay

Lurker
Hi all,

I gave my Xiaomi Mi 10T to my girlfriend's son and I deleted my account on it and made a new one for him.
But now we want to delete the contacts that were on the phone when I was using it and it doesn't work.
Whatever we try it always says "Fout bij opslaan contact" (we are Dutch)
In the phone app it's not possible to adjust or delete any contact and in the contacts app same thing...

Is there any way to get it deleted or am I forced to do a phone reset?
There are still pictures on it (old and new ones) that we don't want to lose and games of him.
 
How were these contacts stored: as Google contacts, or some other account, or as phone contacts (I assume not SIM contacts since you'd not give him the SIM)? Is it only these old contacts that you can't delete, or any contacts at all?

(I'm a little surprised that it didn't remove contacts associated with the account when you removed the account, unless they are stored under some other account or as phone only (no account)).

Rather than do a factory reset you could try clearing data for the "Contacts Storage" app (or whatever it's called in Dutch). This is the app that actually owns the contacts, rather than your contacts app itself (same as SMS are owned by a message storage app rather than an individual SMS app). You will probably only see it in System > Apps if you chose the option to show system apps. My guess is that if you clear that app's data you'll erase the entire contacts database, but unlike a factor reset it won't erase anything else. So if we can't figure out any other solution I'd try that before I considered a factory reset.
 
Joesay said:
Hi all,

I gave my Xiaomi Mi 10T to my girlfriend's son and I deleted my account on it and made a new one for him.
But now we want to delete the contacts that were on the phone when I was using it and it doesn't work.
Whatever we try it always says "Fout bij opslaan contact" (we are Dutch)
In the phone app it's not possible to adjust or delete any contact and in the contacts app same thing...

Is there any way to get it deleted or am I forced to do a phone reset?
There are still pictures on it (old and new ones) that we don't want to lose and games of him.
Click to expand...
Some contacts are hard to delete. One solution is to erase all info for that contact (number, email, etc) and leave ALL fields blank (except the name). Save it and then try to delete it. It will say "Desea eliminar el contacto?" (I speak fluent Spanish) and erase it. It will have to be done individually for every contact. If you also have Telegram or Signal installed, you may need to delete the app in order to be able to erase that "empty" contact. It was my experience and it worked. Good luck!!!
 
You referred to creating a new account for him but that's a bit vague. Keep in mind that you can have multiple user accounts on a phone, but then there's also the issue where when you initially set up a phone you need to tie it to a specific Google account. The distinction being, on your phone there's his user account but (this is just supposition) probably the phone is still linked to your Google account.

So did you just go into the Settings menu and add his new, separate user account? (The end result being there's his user account on the phone that's still linked to your Google account)
Or did you indeed delete your Google account, and then substitute that with his Google account?

... and it may be more of a hassle but doing a Factory Reset right after you remove your Google account will make your phone 'cleaner' and setting it up from scratch with his own apps and services more his than yours. But if there are photos and such that you need to save, you really do need to set up some kind of backup solution to save those precious memories. Smartphones are not reliable as long-term archival storage. If there is personal data you need to keep, use backups.
 
Yeah you can have Terabox for an example to back up everything in less then ten minutes, I have uploaded to them and downloaded around 1.4 Gig already and they are pretty much safe, therefore all those precious family memories will be shared into the heart, and mind as well as whenever you feel so comptempt, just before doing the Factory Reset, and then log in via google, fb or email with that, I tied mine to usually google, and it is super cryptic so you don't lose those memories that you share, OP.
 
Hadron said:
How were these contacts stored: as Google contacts, or some other account, or as phone contacts (I assume not SIM contacts since you'd not give him the SIM)? Is it only these old contacts that you can't delete, or any contacts at all?

(I'm a little surprised that it didn't remove contacts associated with the account when you removed the account, unless they are stored under some other account or as phone only (no account)).

Rather than do a factory reset you could try clearing data for the "Contacts Storage" app (or whatever it's called in Dutch). This is the app that actually owns the contacts, rather than your contacts app itself (same as SMS are owned by a message storage app rather than an individual SMS app). You will probably only see it in System > Apps if you chose the option to show system apps. My guess is that if you clear that app's data you'll erase the entire contacts database, but unlike a factor reset it won't erase anything else. So if we can't figure out any other solution I'd try that before I considered a factory reset.
Click to expand...
All other accounts that were linked with me were deleted from the phone, only his is on it.
The data remove from the phone app and contacts app have been deleted also but still the contacts are on it...
 
KarmaHunter said:
Some contacts are hard to delete. One solution is to erase all info for that contact (number, email, etc) and leave ALL fields blank (except the name). Save it and then try to delete it. It will say "Desea eliminar el contacto?" (I speak fluent Spanish) and erase it. It will have to be done individually for every contact. If you also have Telegram or Signal installed, you may need to delete the app in order to be able to erase that "empty" contact. It was my experience and it worked. Good luck!!!
Click to expand...
Ty for your answer,
I tried to do that by deleting the info and leave the name behind but I'm not able to safe the person.
He only has whatsapp on it and that was newly installed, maybe an older file left behind because the phone didn't got a reset before he got the phone?
 
svim said:
You referred to creating a new account for him but that's a bit vague. Keep in mind that you can have multiple user accounts on a phone, but then there's also the issue where when you initially set up a phone you need to tie it to a specific Google account. The distinction being, on your phone there's his user account but (this is just supposition) probably the phone is still linked to your Google account.

So did you just go into the Settings menu and add his new, separate user account? (The end result being there's his user account on the phone that's still linked to your Google account)
Or did you indeed delete your Google account, and then substitute that with his Google account?

... and it may be more of a hassle but doing a Factory Reset right after you remove your Google account will make your phone 'cleaner' and setting it up from scratch with his own apps and services more his than yours. But if there are photos and such that you need to save, you really do need to set up some kind of backup solution to save those precious memories. Smartphones are not reliable as long-term archival storage. If there is personal data you need to keep, use backups.
Click to expand...
I first made a new account for him and afterwards I deleted all my accounts (Google, outlook, and all those).
Maybe the phone is still linked to mine, where can I look to see if it still linked?
 
Joesay said:
I first made a new account for him and afterwards I deleted all my accounts (Google, outlook, and all those).
Maybe the phone is still linked to mine, where can I look to see if it still linked?
Click to expand...
So what is the primary Google account on the phone? If you open the Play Store what account is it connected to?
 
Milo Williamson said:
Yeah you can have Terabox for an example to back up everything in less then ten minutes, I have uploaded to them and downloaded around 1.4 Gig already and they are pretty much safe, therefore all those precious family memories will be shared into the heart, and mind as well as whenever you feel so comptempt, just before doing the Factory Reset, and then log in via google, fb or email with that, I tied mine to usually google, and it is super cryptic so you don't lose those memories that you share, OP.
Click to expand...
I tried your option but with only 10G of storage .. it's like nothing compared with what's on the phone
 
Back up all those photos and whatever data you want to keep, or at least transfer them to your current phone (.... but you really do need to setup a backup solution. It's just not a good practice to rely on storing important data only on any smartphone. You may think it's not an issue because you haven't lost stuff before but you're rising a lot by assuming it can't happen to you. Phones get lost, stolen, fail in any number or ways so really, backups are important.)
But a part of your problem is you don't want to actually wipe this phone clean of your previous usage. Back up your data, remove your Google account, and do a Factory Reset. Then you can set up the phone from scratch using just his Google account and not yours.
https://support.google.com/android/answer/7664951?hl=en
 
Joesay said:
I tried your option but with only 10G of storage .. it's like nothing compared with what's on the phone
Click to expand...
https://blog.terabox.com/what-is-terabox/ Been using it for over a bloody year, have to log in to get 1 gig per day for free, I have even backed up around 90 percent of my old p.c. files too when I want to, it is a powerful tool and you can back up virtually any time using mobile and using the p.c., I see no comparission of 10 Gig, talking about over


https://www.terabox.com/cloud-stora...00000000000000000000000000&lang=en&purchase=1


1 Terrabit, over 1,000,000 of photos you can upload and download!
 
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