Help Contacts lose changes

[twt]

(My apologies if this is a FAQ -- If it is, please suggest a thread I can look for or the terms I should search for!)

When I make notes in the Notes field in my phone contacts, or change the format of a phone number, or change a field label from Other to Work, many times (not every time) the change gets lost. The phone will say it is saving, and if I look immediately, it looks right, but a few minutes or days later, the contact has reverted to the way it was before I edited it. I have never seen this happen when I make an change in Google contacts using a web browser.

(I also notice that whenever I create a NEW contact on the phone, it SAYS it has created TWO linked contacts on Google, though I have never actually seen more than one. The duplicate fields make it difficult to know which fields to edit on the phone, however.)

I need to find a way to get my phone updates to sync right. My contact notes contain important notes I don't want to forget, and I really need to be able to update those notes away from a PC.

Background: I got my Droid 2 in September after I accidentally broke my Treo. I have been using Palm organizers since 1998 and back then I imported my contacts from an app with data going back to a HyperCard stack from the mid-1980s. After converting everything to Android I have about 1800 contacts, though "only" about 900 of those are what I would consider "important" that copied from my old Palm database on my Treo. (The rest are mostly just email addresses from Gmail and other sources.)

I have been very careful to not use any of the Motorola sync software, or the Verizon backup software, as I have seen some of the performance and data mangling problems with those.

 

[Frisco]

It sometimes syncs to old info at the parent account site, Gmail, etc. It's an ok system, this syncing business, but it sure is not full proof.

Sometimes it's just best to try to enter the contact data and leave it as is, or remove the contact entirely, sync manually, then reenter the contact with the new info.

 

[twt]

It sometimes syncs to old info at the parent account site, Gmail, etc.

Is there any way I can force a sync TO Google?

 

[twt]

Sometimes it's just best to try to enter the contact data and leave it as is, or remove the contact entirely, sync manually, then reenter the contact with the new info.

This sounds similar to an answer I found at Google's Android Help site -- someone recommended exporting the data to a csv file, deleting everything, wiping the phone, and re-importing everything over again. What a drag! Also I would rather avoid doing this unless someone said it would definitely help resolve the problem.

 

[twt]

Is there any way I can force a sync TO Google?

Someone on another site pointed out there is a Sync Now button under Accounts (you have to hit the Menu button to see it). Unfortunately I can't see that it would necessarily force the changes one way only, but I will experiment with it.

 

[winmorgan]

Hi,

Sorry if this is a mite off topic. I saw that you'd migrated your contacts to your droid phone and wanted to ask how you did this? I have lots of Palm desktop/Treo contacts, many with notes and have not been able to find any guidance about how to successfully import them.

Can you help?

Thanks much,

Win

 

[winmorgan]

(My apologies if this is a FAQ -- If it is, please suggest a thread I can look for or the terms I should search for!)

When I make notes in the Notes field in my phone contacts, or change the format of a phone number, or change a field label from Other to Work, many times (not every time) the change gets lost. The phone will say it is saving, and if I look immediately, it looks right, but a few minutes or days later, the contact has reverted to the way it was before I edited it. I have never seen this happen when I make an change in Google contacts using a web browser.

(I also notice that whenever I create a NEW contact on the phone, it SAYS it has created TWO linked contacts on Google, though I have never actually seen more than one. The duplicate fields make it difficult to know which fields to edit on the phone, however.)

I need to find a way to get my phone updates to sync right. My contact notes contain important notes I don't want to forget, and I really need to be able to update those notes away from a PC.

Background: I got my Droid 2 in September after I accidentally broke my Treo. I have been using Palm organizers since 1998 and back then I imported my contacts from an app with data going back to a HyperCard stack from the mid-1980s. After converting everything to Android I have about 1800 contacts, though "only" about 900 of those are what I would consider "important" that copied from my old Palm database on my Treo. (The rest are mostly just email addresses from Gmail and other sources.)

I have been very careful to not use any of the Motorola sync software, or the Verizon backup software, as I have seen some of the performance and data mangling problems with those.

Hi,

Sorry if this is a mite off topic. I saw that you'd migrated your contacts to your droid phone and wanted to ask how you did this? I have lots of Palm desktop/Treo contacts, many with notes and have not been able to find any guidance about how to successfully import them.

Can you help?

Thanks much,

Win

 

[NiceGuysFinishLast]

Hi,

Sorry if this is a mite off topic. I saw that you'd migrated your contacts to your droid phone and wanted to ask how you did this? I have lots of Palm desktop/Treo contacts, many with notes and have not been able to find any guidance about how to successfully import them.

Can you help?

Thanks much,

Win

I don't know jack about palm phones, but you should somewhere have an option to export all your contacts as either a VCF (v card format... I don't know what the V is for) or CSV (Comma separated values) file. You copy that file to your computer, go to contacts.google.com and import all your contacts from that CSV or VCF file. Once it's done, they'll be pushed to your phone.

 

[twt]

I don't know jack about palm phones, but you should somewhere have an option to export all your contacts as either a VCF (v card format... I don't know what the V is for) or CSV (Comma separated values) file. You copy that file to your computer, go to contacts.google.com and import all your contacts from that CSV or VCF file. Once it's done, they'll be pushed to your phone.

Yes, that is basically the process I used. For many years I have not used the "official" Palm Desktop software -- I used JPilot (on Ubuntu Linux, though I believe it's also available for other OS versions). The interface of the software is very similar to the original Palm Desktop software from the 1990s, but it is very reliable.

I did have some sort of kink with the export process -- I believe what I had to do was

1) export from the (JPilot) desktop application as csv
2) import into Ooo Calc (spreadsheet)
3) rearrange / rename the columns to suit Google's requirements
4) save as csv
5) import into Google's Gmail Contact web.

There are all sorts of wrinkles -- for example, Google has two different web interfaces for your contacts with different features, so you have to find the one that does what you need. But except for losing my edits (which is a huge disappointment) the process has been mostly good.