Contacts in a mess. Help please

[drpeej]

Can someone please explain how Contacts are stored and how to tidy them up. I'm in a right mess.

I have moved from an S2 to an S5

These are my issues:

• There seem to be a variety of places where contacts are stored. I have tidied up my GMail list but there are a large number that seem to be stored on the phone itself which I can't find. Many of these are duplicates of the Gmail ones.
  
• There are entries that are found by the search box that don't feature in the actual contact lists at all. For example if I search for 'torex' I get a list of names that are found. However these are not in the contacts and I can't delete them (torex is now defunct)
  
• If I connect my car bluetooth to the phone it lists a whole load of old names in it's address book that just don't appear on my phone at all.
  
• I realise this may be a feature of the bluetooth connection but it also omits a few entries that appear on the phone
  
• What I want to do is clear all contacts off my phone (especially the ones that don't appear in the contacts list) and then rebuild the contacts list from the ones I have tidied up in GMail

Can anyone suggest anything. I have tried a third party desktop manager but it just hangs.

 

[bakmec]

Can someone please explain how Contacts are stored and how to tidy them up. I'm in a right mess.

I have moved from an S2 to an S5

These are my issues:

• There seem to be a variety of places where contacts are stored. I have tidied up my GMail list but there are a large number that seem to be stored on the phone itself which I can't find. Many of these are duplicates of the Gmail ones.
  
• There are entries that are found by the search box that don't feature in the actual contact lists at all. For example if I search for 'torex' I get a list of names that are found. However these are not in the contacts and I can't delete them (torex is now defunct)
  
• If I connect my car bluetooth to the phone it lists a whole load of old names in it's address book that just don't appear on my phone at all.
  
• I realise this may be a feature of the bluetooth connection but it also omits a few entries that appear on the phone
  
• What I want to do is clear all contacts off my phone (especially the ones that don't appear in the contacts list) and then rebuild the contacts list from the ones I have tidied up in GMail

Can anyone suggest anything. I have tried a third party desktop manager but it just hangs.

Seems like something I went through, also upgraded from s2 skyrocket to s5....the contacts can't be from your Sim card cause s2 and s5 sim card are different unless you or the person at the retailer you bought s5 from copied contacts from sim to sim and it loaded contacts from sim card and then when you signed in with your Gmail account it synced the contacts you had with Google account also...that's what it sounds like to me...I would wipe sim card clean of contacts ...go into your contacts and while one that screen there should be the 3 vertical dots/squares towards the upper right, click/press that and press sim management, then select "delete contacts from sim", confirm that...after that , while still in contacts screen, hold down on one of your contacts until it selects it(check mark in the square by then name, and brings up some options and then select all and delete all contacts, once that's done go into the phones settings (drag down from top of screen and click on sprocket looking icon), go down to Contacts/accounts/ and press/click your google/gmail account and it will bring up sync settings and just sync your contacts and you should be good to go...least that's what worked for me, let me know how that's goes

 

[bakmec]

Seems like something I went through, also upgraded from s2 skyrocket to s5....the contacts can't be from your Sim card cause s2 and s5 sim card are different unless you or the person at the retailer you bought s5 from copied contacts from sim to sim and it loaded contacts from sim card and then when you signed in with your Gmail account it synced the contacts you had with Google account also...that's what it sounds like to me...I would wipe sim card clean of contacts ...go into your contacts and while one that screen there should be the 3 vertical dots/squares towards the upper right, click/press that and press sim management, then select "delete contacts from sim", confirm that...after that , while still in contacts screen, hold down on one of your contacts until it selects it(check mark in the square by then name, and brings up some options and then select all and delete all contacts, once that's done go into the phones settings (drag down from top of screen and click on sprocket looking icon), go down to Contacts/accounts/ and press/click your google/gmail account and it will bring up sync settings and just sync your contacts and you should be good to go...least that's what worked for me, let me know how that's goes

 

[drpeej]

I have managed to sort it out with the help of a useful little app called Excel<>Contacts

I was able to export the whole lot to my PC as a spreadsheet and edit it there. I could see what was going on with the strange entries quite easily.

I pruned my contacts list from 1400 to 300 in about a couple of hours and merged a lot of duplicates.

Well worth the

 

[AZgl1500]

Thanks for that Excel<>Contacts bit of info...

I have been looking for a way to get from the phone to my Desktop pc for a long time.