contacts app: SIM vs phone listings

[cbrace]

Hi all,

I just bought my first Android phone yesterday, a HTC Legend. First impressions are very positive.

The first task was to import my contacts from my old phone, which I did via the SIM card. That was easy enough, but I have two things I need to fix:

1.) By default, both the SIM contacts and the phone contacts are listed in the Contacts, meaning everything twice, but I found the option which allows you to switch on and off which sources you want displayed (also for Gmail and FB). So far, so good. However, the SIM contacts are still showing up in the dialer, and I can't find a menu item to control what is displayed here. Anyone know how to fix this?

2.) The name fields of my contacts got mixed up in the conversion. The names are now displayed as in the first name field as the string "last name;first name". I now need to clean up around 140 entries. Doing this on the phone would be a real PITA. Is there some way of doing this in Gmail for example, or exporting a CSV file which I can cleanup and then re-import? Suggestions anyone?

Great forum this.

-Colin

 

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1.) By default, both the SIM contacts and the phone contacts are listed in the Contacts, meaning everything twice, but I found the option which allows you to switch on and off which sources you want displayed (also for Gmail and FB). So far, so good. However, the SIM contacts are still showing up in the dialer, and I can't find a menu item to control what is displayed here. Anyone know how to fix this?

No idea what's happening here, my SIM contacts don't show up at all in anything, have to import them onto the phone to see them. If your contacts are synced to gmail, do the SIM ones show up there?

2.) The name fields of my contacts got mixed up in the conversion. The names are now displayed as in the first name field as the string "last name;first name". I now need to clean up around 140 entries. Doing this on the phone would be a real PITA. Is there some way of doing this in Gmail for example, or exporting a CSV file which I can cleanup and then re-import? Suggestions anyone?

Assuming your contacts are synced with Gmail, just open up your contacts (on your PC) and click Export (top-right of contacts box). You can export it as CSV, make your changes, then re-import

 

[cbrace]

I managed to accomplish what I needed.

First, to get rid of the SIM entries appearing in the dialer, I went to the Contacts app, switched the view to SIM entries only, selected all, and then deleted them.

To clean up the entries imported from my old phone, I ended up exporting the phone contacts to the SD card in vcard format.

I then went to this site: vCard to LDIF/CSV Converter, converted the file to CSV, and opened it in a spreadsheet, where I could easily edit the entries.

To get them back in the phone, I went to this site: CSV to vCard, converted the CSV file back to vcard format, and the phone could import this from the SD card.

It was a bit of a chore, but I assume I won't need to do it again very soon.

I saw my Gmail contacts showing up in my phone, but I deleted them, because I haven't used Gmail for several years, and most were obsolete. However, I haven't seen the phone contacts showing up in Gmail. Does the sync only go one way?