Help Contacts are being deleted - I need to import them again

[spyrosk]

Hi,

I have the below issue with my phone. Hopefully you can help.
Often, I search for a contact only to discover the contact does not exist any more.

In order to find it, I need to go to the Contacts menu and import an old back-up vcard.
This action retrieves the lost contacts.

The issue happens often and unexpectedly. I don't know how to reproduce it, it just happens.

Any thoughts or steer to the right direction would be highly appreciated!
I'm using the latest updates and Android software (Dec. 2017)

Cheers
Spyros

 

[lunatic59]

Do you sync your contacts with Google? The only thing that comes to mind is that the date/time for your phone is off and it's syncing to the latest, which may not have those contacts.

 

[spyrosk]

Hi,

I have certainly synced contacts accidentally as the list is showing hundreds of people from social media and other sources when I only want to see phone contacts with an actual number.

Any thoughts on how to manage contacts more efficiently?

Thanks for your quick response

 

[lunatic59]

I can tell you how I do it. Not sure if it's what you're looking for, but it works for me.

First I do not EVER sync contacts with any social media. That's just noise. What I did initially was to export my contact list into a flat file and then edit that with the ones I want to keep. Then I went into Google on a desktop and deleted every contact that was there and let my devices sync until they were empty. Next, I reimported the edited contact list and added profile pictures to the one's i wanted to have pictures. Again, I let my devices sync the new list.

From there I've managed to keep it pretty clean only syncing to Google. I make sure I backup regularly so I have a complete list in case anything should go crazy.