Help Contacts in wrong order after transfer (last name first)

[ellatrue]

So I just got a new Droid 4, and had Verizon transfer my contacts from my old phone (not a smart phone) to the new one in the store, apparently using some sort of machine in the back room.

On my old phone, I had everyone's name listed with the first name first. Now the droid is listing them with the first name last--even though I checked the settings, and it says it is listing first names first.

I edited one of the contacts, and it shows the first and last names in the wrong fields -- the last name is in the field for the first name. I think it's the same for every contact on the phone.

Somehow, in the process of transferring the contacts, it seems to have decided that everything was listed last name first on the old phone.

So my question is, how do I fix this? Is there any way I can fix the contacts without spending hours to manually edit all of them? Is this an issue I should try taking back to Verizon?

Not entirely sure I am asking in the right place, but I would really appreciate any help with this. I've been searching everywhere and I can't find anyone else with this problem.

 

[chanchan05]

Well first thing I would do, is just sync the contacts to Google and edit it on my PC myself.

 

[Thom]

So my question is, how do I fix this? Is there any way I can fix the contacts without spending hours to manually edit all of them? Is this an issue I should try taking back to Verizon?

With the dialer loaded did you go to Menu | Display options and choose Sort list by and set it to Last name.

I don't have a Droid 4 so I can't check it for you. It is there on the Droid X and Bionic.

... Thom

 

[ellatrue]

I did look under menu>display options>sort list by. It says it is sorted by first name, which is what I want. Switching it to sort by last name does reverse the names so that the first name is listed first, but it also adds a bunch of annoying commas between the names which wouldn't be there otherwise--because it thinks it is actually sorting by last name.

I tried talking to Verizon, and they told me I had to edit the contacts manually. They offered to wipe the phone and import all the contacts from the old phone again, but there's no reason the exact same process would not do the same thing and import them backwards again.

So, I decided to edit them on the computer. Unfortunately, I am having a lot of trouble syncing my contacts with gmail. I have tried telling it to sync on the phone (accounts>google>sync contacts), switching my settings so that contacts are stored with the gmail account (apps>contacts>menu>more>settings>contact storage>google), and turning the automatic sync back on with the battery widget. It says it has synced the contacts (by showing the time it finished). However, when I log into gmail on my computer and hit "contacts," it still only shows me my previous gmail contacts--none of the phone contacts. I'm starting to get pretty frustrated. Am I doing something wrong?

The Verizon folks did say it was possible to do it on the computer if I plugged the phone in with the USB, using the Verizon Motocast software. As far as I can tell from researching it, though, Motocast is just some sort of cloud storage service, and only backs up media files and such from your computer, not phone contacts. I really don't want to install it if it won't actually help.

 

[Thom]

Sorry I can not reproduce your problem.

What I do ... I spend 98% of my time at this workstation. I use Outlook and maintain my contact information on it. I never add a new contact through my phone.

Once a week I export my contacts to a file on the PC. I then logon to Gmail and import the contacts. The automatic update between Gmail and my phone then updates the contacts on my phone.

This solution works well for people who are workstation-centric. If you are phone-centric it would not help.

... Thom