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Help Contacts: change from 'Phone' to 'Google'?

S

stuk71

Newbie
I'm new Android/Google and set my Desire's contacts up onto the phone. I have just realised the benefits of putting everything onto your Google account, and how it auto stores and updates your addresses, numbers, and emails etc... is there any way to change your phone contacts to Google contacts? without having to type them all out again. I can not seen to find how to do this... Anybody know?
 
Not sure, but you can link your phone and google contacts so that they show up as one in your phone.

Click on a contact in the people menu, at the top right you'll see a little chain-link graphic. Click it and you can select google/phone accounts to link.
 
but @lekky would that not mean you'd still have the duplicate old copy of all your contacts in the "phone contacts"

which you wouldn't want the phone trying to link these
and they'd show in people search

do you know of a way to "delete all phone contacts"

I've been scouring the forum and the phone menus but haven't seen any way to do this

I have a duplicate copy at the moment and I'm beginning to resign myself to manually deleting all of them individually
 
This can be quite complicated at first.

I exported my phone contacts and imported to google.

I then indeed had two copies of each contact.

The phone linked some of them.

I thought, that if I filter the contact so only the phone ones show, I would be able to delete them, leaving the google ones.

I found that this didn't work on the linked contacts. If they are linked, even if you filter for phone contacts only, if you delete, it deletes phone and goodle entries.

I've resorted to going though each contact, unlinking, and then deleting the phone one.

Also, on contacts (such as compnaies) which don't have a first name or sir name, but use the "organisaiton field", when you re-import them from the SD card, the phone doesn't know which name to use, so takes the phone number instead.

Question : where exactly on the SD is the backup made? How can I delete it?
 
eske said:
but @lekky would that not mean you'd still have the duplicate old copy of all your contacts in the "phone contacts"

which you wouldn't want the phone trying to link these
and they'd show in people search

do you know of a way to "delete all phone contacts"

I've been scouring the forum and the phone menus but haven't seen any way to do this

I have a duplicate copy at the moment and I'm beginning to resign myself to manually deleting all of them individually
Click to expand...

Once you've doen the above to copy the contacts to google contacts, you will have double cotnacts yeah. To delete the phone contacts do:

people > menu > view > select ONLY phone contacts
then
menu > delete > select and delete all
then
people > menu > view > select google contacts
 
@Banzibarn i'm not sure where on the sd card the backup is

but if you're ever in that situation again

rather than having to go through each one unlink and delete

you can filter view to contacts and (as @lekky explianed) hit delete then select all

and

you're right it does delete linked contacts on google contacts too but on the next sync I got a message saying "max number of deletes" on gmail contacts and asked me how i wanted to proceed - giving the option not to delete on the server side

problem sorted - zero phone contacts - 486 google contacts

note I'm not sure what the max no. of deletes is so backup gmail contacts first
 
While my phonebook is nice and tidy, I've just gone in to create a new text message and all the contacts are listed twice - one phone and one Google. I've tried changing the view setting in people but it doesn't change the way the names are displayed in the messages app. Is the only way round this to delete one of the sets of contacts?

Also this might an apt moment to ask how the sync function works - if I save a new number in my phone will it upload to my gmail account? If that's the case then conversely if I delete my phone contacts to tidy things up, will the contacts uploaded to my gmail account remain in tact?
 
Good information here, I managed to get mine sorted anyway.

Though I have 2 more questions:

I have 2 'google' contacts that just will not list on the server side or in the 'people list' but they can be searched and all the info is there for them... very strange... I think I will re-enter the details as it is only 2 of my contacts that seem to be doing this.

Also is there any way to disable/hide 'send message' entries as at the moment the Desire adds a 'send message' to all the numbers stored, land lines and business lines included.

Thanks
 
lekky said:
Once you've doen the above to copy the contacts to google contacts, you will have double cotnacts yeah. To delete the phone contacts do:

people > menu > view > select ONLY phone contacts
then
menu > delete > select and delete all
then
people > menu > view > select google contacts
Click to expand...

I did the above. When i click on phone, i can see the contacts. But from the people app i cant see any of the contacts any more. I double checked that i did the "people > menu > view > select google contacts" step. But still nothing.
 
NO!
no!
No don't do it!
=====

Originally Posted by lekky

Once you've doen the above to copy the contacts to google contacts, you will have double cotnacts yeah. To delete the phone contacts do:


people > menu > view > select ONLY phone contacts

then

menu > delete > select and delete all

then

people > menu > view > select google contacts

=====
No don't do it!
no!
NO!

This method also removes any linked contacts from Google when deleting them from the phone. In order to delete Phone Contacts while keeping Google contacts, every Contact -=*MUST*=- first be unlinked. What seems to be missing here is a button to "Unlink All Contacts".

Until then I recommend using Google's desktop web interface to Merge all duplicate Contacts, then use your phone to Export Google Contacts to SD, then delete all Contacts in the Phone, then Import from SD to Google.

Evo 2.2 Froyo
 
ProphetZarquon said:
Until then I recommend using Google's desktop web interface to Merge all duplicate Contacts, then use your phone to Export Google Contacts to SD, then delete all Contacts in the Phone, then Import from SD to Google.
Click to expand...

OR you can delete everything from Phone Contacts first BEFORE you do the import. So export to SD -> filter phone contacts and delete -> import from SD to Google. No duplicates.

If you wanna be on the safer side you can export both phone and Google contacts to SD before all this just so you have a backup.

HTC Desire 2.2 Froyo
 
Wonder if you can help me also ,

i have sorted out my contacts so they are all on google account, when i link accounts to facebook using friends stream i get all facebook contacts appearing when trying to add people to a text.

i have used the filters in the contacts settings so when i browse contacts to call i only get google contacts but i still get all my facebook contacts when adding people to texts.

the only way i have found of stopping this is to delete my facebook account off friends stream , but that removes all the links and photos from my contacts....

any ideas so i can keep my facebook links but only see google contacts when sending texts...
 
theorizing here:
1. Disable Contact Sync
2.Backup your phone contacts to outlook using the HTC sync desktop program.
3.Then import your contacts from Outlook to Google ( you now have all your phone contacts in your Google Account)
4. Delete all contacts in phone
5. Now resync contacts ( im assuming it would import all contacts as Google contacts)

Not certain if this will work, will try it out in a day once i've "sufficiently" backed up my phonebook :)
 
Take some time, open up contacts.google.com and have at it. Manually edit all contacts and save yourself some troubles.

The best way (if you have a slight case of OCD so all names must be uniform, contacts must have a pic etc.).
 
I started to do what was instructed in this thread and wished i wouldn't of bothered.

- All my quickdial shortcuts do not work.
- All my "groups" have been lost
- All the numbers are now xxx-xxx-xxxxx and have the dashes in.

If it ain't broke....

So now i have all "google" contacts, now what??
 
have just completed as suggested and so yes now I onyl have google contacts in phone...no phone contacts...no sim contacts (do people still store numbers on a sim card)

I now can auto sync (using sync2) all contacts and calenders with my outlook without having to connect physically. Any changes I make will automatically (depedant up[on sync schedual) with phone and outlook wherver I make the changes/additions/deletions etc woo hoo

I must remeber to chance htc sync settigns to only synce media and not claender or contacts or I imagine duplicate will occur.

the dashes in the phone numbers do not seem to make a differnce to the phone call.

Ok...so groups also lost. I thought a sync with Google would put them back. Didn't. They are still in Google but not on the phone. Any ideas how to put them back?
 
Have you looked at HamsterSync which states that it can sync Outlook and Google Contacts? I use MyPhoneExplorer to do this as I had all sort of corruption problems when using HTC Sync.
 
Hi Guys,

I'm new here, so greetings to all. I am having an issue where, as recommended I have backed up all contacts to SD card, then moved them to the phone as google contacts. This worked fine. But as soon as I go in to accounts and sync, my contacts will not sync to google. It starts attempting to but fails.

Everything else (Mail and calendar) is perfect. Just not contacts. Is it because I have a few contacts with birthdays? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
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