Contacts sort order by lastname

[RowanB]

I just received my new Android phone (an LG-P500) toady. I've just uploaded all my 2000+ contacts to Google via Google Apps Migration, and they magically appeared on my phone. So far so good... But they are sorted by first name. So I have all the John's together. This is nuts.

How can I either get the phone to sort the contacts in lastname order, or get Google to upload them in the format Smith, John rather than John Smith (which I guess would achieve the same thing).

Thanks - Rowan

 

[lunatic59]

Open up the contacts app and press menu>more>display options and you can change how contacts are sorted.

 

[RowanB]

Thanks - that's exactly what I needed to know. Hopefully I won't be asking such stupid questions after a day or two of familiarisation!

Rowan

 

[lunatic59]

Basic questions can be the most frustrating. Ask as many as you'd like.

 

[RowanB]

Basic questions can be the most frustrating.

Too true!

Now a related question: I've now changed my contacts to show, and be sorted by lastname first. This works fine for most of them, but a few are still appearing and being sorted wrongly. For example, Aaron Mackenzie should be sorted by MacKenzie, but is appearing with the A's. And Smith, Simon A should appear and be sorted as such, but is actually appearing as A Smith, Simon. I have checked both of these in Outlook (which is where they originally came from), and they are both filed and sorted correctly there.

Why is this going wrong? If I only had a few contacts, I could perhaps fix these manually, but I've got over 2,000.

Thanks - Rowan

 

[lunatic59]

I'll bet that the contacts in question were originally setup or imported with both names in one field. For example, you go to the contact Smith, Simon A and you'll find that it's all in the first name field. The easiest was to correct this is to have your contacts sync'ed to your Gmail account (if you haven't already) and then open them up in Gmail to edit. Much easier than trying it one at a time on your phone. As soon as you edit them in Gmail, they'll sync back properly.

 

[chanchan05]

I'll bet that the contacts in question were originally setup or imported with both names in one field. For example, you go to the contact Smith, Simon A and you'll find that it's all in the first name field.

This is true for almost all contacts found or transferred from a SIM card