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Help Help! Phone contacts go missing randomly on android.

N

nadude

Lurker
New to this forum, so hope this is the right place to post. Tried googling and searching through the forums but couldn't find anything relevant.

I've got an HTC One X synced to my google account. I randomly started losing newly saved contacts recently, it seemed like new contacts wouldn't get synced to google and instead get deleted from my phone too. I had to go back and re add the ones that I remembered and could get again.

Two weeks ago, I added a new contact again, that I called many times. Today I went to find it, and its not there. I tried restoring contacts via the gmail interface to different time periods and its not there either.

What is going on? Why are my new contacts being removed automatically? How do i fix this?
 
welcome to af nadude. Sir did you try checking your gmail, and see if you have your contacts there. Because i never encountered this problem before. Check if your HOX is showing phone contacts only. or is Gmail checked too ?
 
In reply to Jim, yes I did add a new contact in Google directly as well as on my phone and they get synced ok. The problem is the, apparent random, disappearance of contacts.
 
Sorry for all these random questions, this problem is happening with quite a few people but in different ways...

Have you recently changed your Google account from googlemail.com to gmail.com, or at least while you were having this problem?

Cheers
 
No I didn't. I cannot quite figure out when contacts are lost. The sync is not always on as I travel a lot but that should not have an impact.

The problem of course is that I don't know which contacts I am losing until I have to use a contact. More apparent are the duplicates. This is a pain in the neck as well. Normally there only a few dupes, commonly of people I deal with a lot. One contact went berserk and I have some 2000 of the same which I have just now deleted (again) on my Android. When I try to sync it I get a message "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly."

Which is actually supposed to be the master: the phone of Google Contacts?
 
Same here, and I always add them to Google, no problems syncing usually... Also the contacts have disappeared from my gmail account as well... HTC One X
 
Have a Droid Razr Maxx, went from over 2k contacts down to 850.. randomly lost. New & old. Verizon states, "no known issues", which means not enough reported issues, nor known lost contacts. Please post any resolutions for actually getting these lost contacts from gmail. I think these are being randomly deleted while syncing. Not a good thing when I've worked 10 yrs compiling contacts, and thought they were backed up by gmail. Very costly.
 
I keep having to restore contacts as they keep quietly vanishing, a few or many at a time, randomly it seems...
I don't use gmail for anything other than the fact I have to have it to use an android, I don't enter any contacts directly into gmail (why should I?) and some contacts are stored on the sim card and others on the phone. Also the number of contacts counted by the phones 'contact' application is different from the number displayed by a sim utility which is different from the number of contacts that are reported as being successfully restored:confused::mad:
Any contacts that may be entered between backups, if lost, will not be restored. It is almost like "losing" database records that magically reappear after indices are rebuilt!
 
My Atrix just started having the same type of problem. Worked fine until I got the
latest update. Edited a saved contact to add a cell number; when I hit the "save"
button it just disappeard never to be seen again. Luckily, I still have my SIM card
from my previous phone and could transfer them over again. Don't want to waste my time though if it is going to do this kind of thing when ever it feels like it.
Help!!!!!
 
That's weird. I have my contacts synced with two GMAIL accounts and when I am adding a new one, I just tap "Google" and it is automatically saved and can be accessed from both the device as well as gmail.com.
 
I have had this same problem for years now. Four different android phones, Eris, Ally, Droid X and now Spectrum. Drives me insane. I have had a Gmail account since inception. There is no consistency on why this happens--totally random. And since I sync my phone to my desktop--it affects both. It is not always a complete contact--this morning got a text from someone--his name, address and email are still in my contacts but his number is not. Sometimes the email addy is lost, sometimes it's the name, sometimes it's the number. Can't tell you how many times I've talked to someone, went to call them the next week and they are just gone from contacts.

My solution is to keep my outlook contacts list as well and I back that up to dropbox. I do this by hand as there is not an ez sync between Gmail and Outlook. Even if there was an ez sync, I could never trust it. I've just accepted that it's a pain in the ass quirk of an android phone.

You'll find this issue on all boards with no real solution aside from having contacts backed up to another program other than gmail.
 
If anyone is still having a problem with their contacts disappearing, check to see if you have an app called CALL CONTROL installed.

That app has been reported in just about every reported case of contact loss.

Remove that app and your problem should disappear.
 
Thanks NJRonbo. A friend of mine has been complaining that ever since the Jelly bean OS install in December that his contacts were disappearing randomly. Yes he has Call Control installed (paid for) but unfortunately can't uninstall it as it blocks huge #'s of spam calls per day. If anyone knows of a quality alternative, that would be great.

Sarge
 
Sarge,

It ticks me off that as many links to the forum posts that I have personally sent to the company, they fail to acknowledge that the problems are the fault of their software.

Not even an offer of a refund for the lifetime subscription I paid them.

With all the problems this software has caused a good handful of people, I would have hoped for better cooperation from the software company.
 
Hey guys... I figured out why this happened on my phone, hopefully this will help someone else who did the same thing. FYI I have a Galaxy Note 2.

I was looking for "Bob" and he had disappeared from my contacts. So at the top there is a Search field. I Searched for "Bob" and it pulled up the contact "Jay"... which made no sense at first. After opening up contact "Jay" I found two separate telephone numbers... one with an area code for "Bob" and another with an area code matching where Jay lives. Apparently I had inadvertently JOINED the contact "Bob" to contact "Jay"... causing "Bob" to disappear from my contacts list.

This is an easy fix.

Just open the contact that has multiple numbers, hit the menu button on the bottom left corner of the phone (my phone anyway) and choose "separate contact."

Hope this helps someone.
 
have had this happen for the last week. New contacts added would just unsafe. The sms would still be there, but the contact name would be deleted. Had to safe one contact 4 times, before it stopped disappearing. The only thing I can think of causing it is the 360 antivirus app, I installed a bit over a week ago. It did find some maleware, so I am glad I installed it, but have uninstalled for now, and replaced with another antivirus app....
 
I picked up a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 from T-Mobile this week. I've had contacts I just created disappear within minutes. Method of entry included:
  1. Adding to an existing contact from a new number in SMS.
  2. Creating a new contact from a new number in SMS.
I checked my online gmail contacts via laptop and browser. Confirmed contact is not there.

This is not a case of the contact being in error or mislocated. For example, after contact creation, the SMS for which the contact was needed did update from displaying the number, to display the contact name.

A few minutes later, the SMS label reverted back to the number, and I confirmed the contact indeed no longer existed. It seems contact sync may only be occurring one-way, from server to device, with new device contacts being deleted.
 
Last edited:
Facing the exactly same issue as under in my Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

unsignedKnabble said:
I picked up a Samsung Galaxy Note 5 from T-Mobile this week. I've had contacts I just created disappear within minutes. Method of entry included:
  1. Adding to an existing contact from a new number in SMS.
  2. Creating a new contact from a new number in SMS.
I checked my online gmail contacts via laptop and browser. Confirmed contact is not there.

This is not a case of the contact being in error or mislocated. For example, after contact creation, the SMS for which the contact was needed did update from displaying the number, to display the contact name.

A few minutes later, the SMS label reverted back to the number, and I confirmed the contact indeed no longer existed. It seems contact sync may only be occurring one-way, from server to device, with new device contacts being deleted.
Click to expand...
 
Hello,
I have Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and last couple of weeks I am having contacts problem. My contacts randomly disappear and reappear.
Please let me know if anyone find out why it is happening? And how to solve the problem?

Thanks,
 
I have a note5 and thr same thing is happening. Doesn't matter if I save to Google or outlook they still disappear. It's always the numbers I call most frequently too. Weird thing is when I add them again it remembers the background or image associated with the contact originally.
 
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