Sorting out contacts

[bingobango]

My contacts are a mess. I dont know what I did but after backing up and restoring they are all over the place.

I have facebook contacts, phone contacts, google contacts, sims contacts and even twitter ones.

Can anyone explain how all this works (or should work).

If I add a contact how should it be added, and should it be linked to facebook.

I used Contact Analyser 2 app from the market to try and merge all the contacts which had the same phone number. I merged them all as google contacts but in a lot of cases it seems to have messed up the facebook linking.

Is there anyway to really sort out your contacts, get them all linked correctly and store them somewhere (preferably online to be accessed anywhere). Not necessarliy an app, or doing it pn the phone - even some way to edit them on the PC or upload them to somewhere and correct them, then back on the phone.

What happens with google account syncing?

Thanks for the help

 

[bingobango]

Right here is what I did after some searching.

I downloaded an app called Backup Contacts, and I exported ALL my contacts as a CSV file to my sd card.

I then opened this in Excel (or Open office would do) and I edited all my contacts. I deleted any duplicates etc.

I am now going to upload this CSV file to Gmail. Then delete ALL my phone, sim, google contacts from my phone.

Then, when I do a gmail contacts sync - all my contacts should be imported as google ones.

Problem is, Gmail is blocked in work and I can't seem to find the import contacts option using my phone on the gmail website. I even tried the desktop website but still can't find it??

 

[markjwilson]

What you have done is the only way to sort them out. that's to embrace the Cloud and put all your contacts onto google. The contacts are then synced along with all the other google info.

Don't forget to turn off all other sources in the view contacts setting.

FYI: Gmail is also blocked at my office but I can still get at my contacts via http://www.google.co.uk/contacts

 

[bingobango]

Thanks for this.

I was able to access the link from my phone, and I used astro to browse for the csv file, everytime I clicked on 'import' on the website, it said 'please select a file'.

You can see the file path that I selected and the filename, but it seems to have added a '/' at the end. Hence the google website can't see the file.

Tried the above link in work but I just keep getting a constant looping redirect (in both chrome and IE).

edit: managed to get it working using a different link. Just deleting all contacts on my phone now before syncing!

 

[bingobango]

Hmm

synced and wondered why my contacts list was quite short. Checked a few contacts in google and it seems to have placed the phone number under the 'custom' field and not in the phone number field.

Hence when synced they were not being displayed as I had chosen to only show those contacts with a phone number in the desire.

Looks like I will have to edit them all in google and move the phone number field..

 

[spile]

MyPhoneExplorer (free app) is a useful app to sync your contacts between android and windows. Editing is then much easier as they'll be on the PC.