Help iPhone to Pixel: missing contacts

[connorhawke]

2 issues relating to missing contacts on my Pixel:

1. After switching from iPhone to Pixel in which I used the steps at https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/7129740?hl=en, I saw that a few contacts appeared to be unaccounted for in the transfer.

2. I planned to compare exports of the iPhone and Pixel contacts to see which contacts were missing, but the vcf export of the Pixel contacts (exported via Contacts app > Settings > Export) are missing many contacts (hundreds, although seemingly on the phone).

Any advice?

 

[svim]

Since at this point it appears as if the Contacts app on your Pixel phone just didn't get receive your contacts import properly, it might be best to just start that import process from scratch and try again. Go into your Pixel's Settings >> Apps menu, find and open Contacts app entry, tap on Force stop and then find and tap on Clear data. Using Clear data wipes that app's settings and configuration files, and its cache. This essentially returns the app back to its original, first time used state.

Now using your iPhone, manually export your contacts to a VCF file. Now transfer that new VCF file you just created from your iPhone to your Pixel, an easy way is to just save that VCF file as an email attachment on your iPhone and send it to yourself. Open that email message on your Pixel and download the VCF attachment. Then try importing it into the Contacts app and see if that made any difference.

As an aside, if you were previously going through the export - import process to transfer your contacts list apparently you don't have your contacts syncing with an email service. If that were the case, you would only need to enable syncing for Contacts in your Settings menu on your Pixel to have the process done automatically. Hopefully on your iPhone you were allowing backups into your iCloud account, otherwise it's a dangerously risky thing to have your contacts list only exist on your phone. Android doesn't have an automatic backup/restore feature as extensive and seamless as iPhones although Google did recently state it 'has plans' to expand its automatic backup strategy in the near future. But there's also reality so at this point, you do need to implement a good backup solution for your Pixel, or at least enable syncing between your email service and the Contacts app on your Pixel.

 

[connorhawke]

So issue #2 in my original post actually seems false as I initially applied the wrong filtering.

There were a few other weird discrepancies during the comparison attempts, but ultimately I did not find the reason for the single-digit difference in the contacts count between iPhone and Pixel or even solid evidence of missing contacts, so have decided at this stage it's not worth further time investment.

Since at this point it appears as if the Contacts app on your Pixel phone just didn't get receive your contacts import properly, it might be best to just start that import process from scratch and try again. Go into your Pixel's Settings >> Apps menu, find and open Contacts app entry, tap on Force stop and then find and tap on Clear data. Using Clear data wipes that app's settings and configuration files, and its cache. This essentially returns the app back to its original, first time used state.

Now using your iPhone, manually export your contacts to a VCF file. Now transfer that new VCF file you just created from your iPhone to your Pixel, an easy way is to just save that VCF file as an email attachment on your iPhone and send it to yourself. Open that email message on your Pixel and download the VCF attachment. Then try importing it into the Contacts app and see if that made any difference.

As an aside, if you were previously going through the export - import process to transfer your contacts list apparently you don't have your contacts syncing with an email service. If that were the case, you would only need to enable syncing for Contacts in your Settings menu on your Pixel to have the process done automatically. Hopefully on your iPhone you were allowing backups into your iCloud account, otherwise it's a dangerously risky thing to have your contacts list only exist on your phone. Android doesn't have an automatic backup/restore feature as extensive and seamless as iPhones although Google did recently state it 'has plans' to expand its automatic backup strategy in the near future. But there's also reality so at this point, you do need to implement a good backup solution for your Pixel, or at least enable syncing between your email service and the Contacts app on your Pixel.

I appreciate the recommendations. My iPhone contacts were synced with iCloud but I'm not aware of a way to directly auto-sync them with Google (although now they are, after the swap).

 

[svim]

Another option is to take that exported VCF file from your iPhone, import that into your Google account, and then go to
https://contacts.google.com and checking your contacts list to see if it's intact. Should be easier to check/edit/clean up your contacts using the larger screen on a computer/laptop with a physical keyboard and mouse if necessary. Then set up syncing with the Contacts app on your Pixel so it merges properly with your online Google account.