Voice Search Problems

[PirateDroid]

My voice search does a web search, but will not search contacts. I have contacts checked as a searchable item and have cleared the cache. Neither has solved the problem. Any recommendations before I take the phone back to Verizon?

 

[Humpa]

My voice search does a web search, but will not search contacts. I have contacts checked as a searchable item and have cleared the cache. Neither has solved the problem. Any recommendations before I take the phone back to Verizon?

If you are returning it to exchange it, don't bother. This certainly doesn't sound like a phone issue.

I'm not sure which fields the "search" app searches. But I'm guessing it is not searching the field you think it is. Try searching for a first name that you have in a contact's "first name" field (then try the same thing with last name, and then with nickname or whatever other fields are used for the name).

 

[Humpa]

Oh, Voice Search ... Voice Search is a little different.
If you just click the Search icon you can type things in the search box and it will populate a list underneath (contacts, songs, pics, whatever - depending on your options). But if you click on the "go" button or if you do a voice search, it goes to a google.com search. That just seems to be how it is.

 

[oaks]

I was having this problem a couple of days ago but I figured out what the problem is.

The Voice Search searches the First and Last name fields in the contacts. In my situation, I had my contacts synced with Facebook, which isn't a problem, it just adds a little confusion to things.

For example, before I synced my contacts with Facebook, I only had "Baby Girl" under my wife's nickname and left the First and Last name field blank. But when I synced it with Facebook it automatically displayed her first and last name, but didn't actually populate the first and last name fields. I was getting very frustrated that I could call SOME people using voice search, but for others it would seem that it didn't even look in my contacts list.

In short, make sure to manually populate at least the first name or last name, or both fields of your contacts and then try it.

I would check every person that is synced with Facebook to start off with.

I hope this helps.

 

[lindsmith]

My voice search does a web search, but will not search contacts. I have contacts checked as a searchable item and have cleared the cache. Neither has solved the problem. Any recommendations before I take the phone back to Verizon?[/QUOTE

I've had the same problem on my Droid for about two months. "Call" voice command (as well as "open" command) just initiates a google search. However -- voice search's "map" and "navigate to" commands (both Google related) still work fine. I've tried the same fixes as PirateDroid, also to no avail. Update to 2.1, sadly, did not set things right. Google seems to have hijacked the voice search feature so that it no longer works with my phone's non-google related bells and whistles!

 

[mystereon]

To Dial a number you have to say "Dial <contact name".

 

[nstallion]

To Dial a number you have to say "Dial <contact name".

I use "Call <name>" all the time and it works fine.

 

[Phoenixdroid]

Yeah I was going through that last week. Very fustrating because I was trying to use my droid like they show on tv and for some reason it would go to a google search instead of searching the phone even though all the boxes have been checked to search the phone.

Someone helped me out by telling me to download Gestore Search made by Google and that seemed to work well and allowed me to find anything on my phone.

 

[lindsmith]

What drives me nuts is that "call" <name> worked perfectly the first 2 months I had the Droid. I got really used to it-- it was pretty close to hands-free dialing, and, frankly, a big reason I bought the Droid.

I haven't been able to locate Gestore Search online--where do you find it?

 

[Phoenixdroid]

Probably since I spelled it wrong....sorry I checked this three times before I typed it and still screwed it up......

".....I always seem to mess up some sort of mundane detail...."
hahahaha - guess movie

Anyway it is called GESTURE SEARCH - made by Google. Found it in the Market, search and fill in the name above or search for google apps. It is a free app.

 

[edsawma]

My problem: I had hundreds of contacts in Google Contacts that I did not want to show up in Voice Search. At the same time, I had my Droid phone contacts set up to only display and sync with my corporate Microsoft Exchange server. The problem was that Voice Search would not find any of my Exchange /Outlook contacts, however, I could not get it to stop suggesting names of people it pulled from Google Contacts who I last spoke to 5 years ago.

I tried master resets and clearing caches, but nothing worked.

Finally, after a bunch of testing, I realized that Google Voice Search only searches those contacts that are in your Google profile. It searches everything in "My Contacts" by default, in addition to any other categories you select.

Solution: I exported my Outlook contacts to CSV, and imported them into Google Contacts as a new category called "phone". I then removed from "My Contacts all 500 or so contacts that were there. I set up synchronization to only synchronize the "phone" category from Google. I disabled my Exchange / Outlook contact sync.

This solution seems to work now. I do have to add any new contacts though to Google now instead of to Outlook / Exchange.

------------------------

Updating, because it looks like now that I have removed all my contacts from "My Contacts", the Google Voice search does not find any contacts at all. Maybe you have to keep the ones you want in "My Contacts". Unfortunately, Google gives you no easy way of taking one category, and putting all selected into "My Contacts". The Voice Dialer still works though, so I might just give up on this and use that when I want to make a call.