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Looking for help with long standing Google contacts issue.

Z

ZepTepi

Android Enthusiast
This is an issue I've had with Google contacts for years. It's something I had looked into several years ago and gotten frustrated because nobody could give me a good answer as to what's going on so I dropped my attempts to figure this out until now. I recently posted this, again, on the crappy Google forums but as of yet have gotten no replies. If anyone here can provide me with a good solution then I'll be very appreciative.

My problem is that Google has multiple listings for numerous people on both of my contact lists(work & personal emails). For instance, one of my best friends is listed 5 times. None of the 5 listings have all the info from all 5. 3 have his Comcast email address, 1 has his yahoo email, 1 has no email. 4 have his cell #, 1 has no #. 2 are listed as "starred in android". 2 show a "nickname" though they are not the same. 1 shows a facebook image. 3 shows his birthday. His is just one example. My gf has 7 listings. Some of my fellow managers from work have 2-3 listings while others only have 1.

This is a pain in the ass in several ways. When trying to make calls from my phone I have to pick from several of the same phone # when each person should only have 1 work#, 1 cell#, ect. This should not be like this. Who in their right mind would design something to work like this??

I would simply delete all but 1 contact for each person, as I have before, but that would be very time consuming as I would have to first edit them to consolidate all info for a particular person into 1 contact then delete the others. I did something like that before with a few contacts only to find multiple contacts for them again when I switched to a new phone. It's like Google is somehow creating new contacts for a person when it syncs. Not sure if that's what's happening but it seems that way.

Another issue that my gut says is somehow related is that some of my work contacts, fellow managers, have multiple emails listed within their contact. Their work email is listed as their "work" email but a 2nd email address is listed as their "Home" email. I have, multiple times, deleted their "Home" email only to find it added back to their listing at a later point. Clearly this is being done by Google/Gmail automatically. It wouldn't be an issue except when I go to send a group email and click on the group it lists both address for those paople and I have to manually uncheck them or not use the check all function and instead maunally check the email address box for each person. As with my other issue I don't get why it has to work like this.

I've searched for settings within Gmail & Google contacts for ways to turn something off, uncheck a box, anything that would fix these issues but have never found anything.

I'll deal with feeling like a dummy if the fix for this is simply but I just want to know what it is.

Any useful help with either of both of these issues would be greatly appreciated!!

Oh yeah, one other thing.....a bit of a venting.......why the f'n hell does Google not provide any kind of tech support for their products that millions use like Gmail & Google contacts???

edit: Just realized I forgot to mention another issue. Google has put some of my personal contacts on my work Gmail account contacts list and visa versa. I'd like to remedy this but haven't a clue how too. Adding to the strangeness is that, for the contacts that are on both accounts, the contacts aren't identical. Can you merge contacts from different accounts onto one accounts contact list?
 
Sorry you're having such an annoying problem, ZepTepi. I actually had something very similar happen once when I transferred my address book from one phone to another--the new phone READ the old phone's card, but somehow decided to make separate entries for each contact whose original entry had multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses...whatever. But I digress, because it wasn't the same issue (i.e., not Google).

So I'm thinking this might do better on the Google board. It's not device specific, correct? It's happened on multiple devices over multiple years? Let's see if it generates some help on the Google board.

Oh yeah, one other thing.....a bit of a venting.......why the f'n hell does Google not provide any kind of tech support for their products that millions use like Gmail & Google contacts???
Click to expand...
I truly have no idea! :dontknow:
 
MoodyBlues said:
Sorry you're having such an annoying problem, ZepTepi. I actually had something very similar happen once when I transferred my address book from one phone to another--the new phone READ the old phone's card, but somehow decided to make separate entries for each contact whose original entry had multiple phone numbers, e-mail addresses...whatever. But I digress, because it wasn't the same issue (i.e., not Google).

So I'm thinking this might do better on the Google board. It's not device specific, correct? It's happened on multiple devices over multiple years? Let's see if it generates some help on the Google board.


I truly have no idea! :dontknow:
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There's a Google board here?? I looked for one before posting here but didn't see it. If you meant the actual Google forum, I posted there but have not gotten a reply yet.
 
Does the problem exist when viewed on a computer or only on the phone?

Have you checked the view options in the contacts app?

Obviously, Google offers limited direct tech support for most services because it's very expensive to do, especially phone support, but most services are free. For some paid services such as Google Fiber, they have excellent customer support, including phone support.
 
Crashdamage said:
Does the problem exist when viewed on a computer or only on the phone?

Have you checked the view options in the contacts app?

Obviously, Google offers limited direct tech support for most services because it's very expensive to do, especially phone support, but most services are free. For some paid services such as Google Fiber, they have excellent customer support, including phone support.
Click to expand...

So where was I? Finally getting back to this issue after having to move it down the priority list for awhile. In answer to you question from way back in late Sep, the multiple contacts for a single person/company is an issue in my Google contacts on my PC/Laptop as well but to much less of an extent than on my phone. For example, the instances of multiple entries for a single person/company on the PC for entries between "A" & "D" is 19 and all but 2 of those are just 2 entries for that single person/company where as on my phone there are 86 instances of multiple entries for a single person/company between "A" & "D" and many of them have 3-5 entries for each unique person/company. It's gotten worse each time I've had to change phones. If you look at the multiple entries for a person/company each entry isn't the same. One may have a phone #, another might have an email address, another a ph# AND email address, ect, ect. They aren't exact copies. I also noticed that some of the contacts listed on my personal Gmail contacts list are contacts that should only be associated with my work Gmail account but they have somehow migrated to my personal account and I have no idea how or why.

These and a few other Gmail issues I've been experiencing for the last 4-5 years to a worsening degree as time goes on. I've sought help on multiple forums/chat rooms and although I've been advised to try different fixes a few times(like merging the Google contacts in question) no fix has worked very well if at all.
 
What I would suggest you do is time consuming but I think it will work for good.....

What I believe may be happening is that when you are adding information to existing contacts via PC Google is somehow assuming those are new contacts. So when you sync your contacts it adds them as new contacts. Male sure that when you are updating information ei...email, new numbers ect...that they aren't adding as new contacts.

Delete all your phone contacts, go through all of your contacts on your PC merge and delete as necessary. After your done try resyncing your contacts..................

That's my advice, hope it helps.
 
MLSS said:
What I would suggest you do is time consuming but I think it will work for good.....

What I believe may be happening is that when you are adding information to existing contacts via PC Google is somehow assuming those are new contacts. So when you sync your contacts it adds them as new contacts. Male sure that when you are updating information ei...email, new numbers ect...that they aren't adding as new contacts.

Delete all your phone contacts, go through all of your contacts on your PC merge and delete as necessary. After your done try resyncing your contacts..................

That's my advice, hope it helps.
Click to expand...

Your right that does sound time consuming but I'm open to trying anything at this point. Ty for the advice.
 
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