My new Galaxy S4 Deleting All Gmail Contacts Synced in my Phone AND in Gmail!

[inquisigirl]

I've googled and have been trying to figure out why my S4 is deleting all my contacts from it. I have my contacts synced with my gmail contacts and this has been the case for years. I had a Samsung Infuse before this and have never had a problem. I've had the S4 for about 3 weeks now and this hasn't happened until yesterday. And since yesterday it has happened 3x's. At first I thought it was a Trulia app (realestate app) that I was using to try to call some realtors. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence but the first 2 times I was on the app and my contacts disappeared. How I recovered them was through the contacts recovery feature on Gmail. Thank goodness for that! I would be SOL if I were out and needed to call someone on my contacts list immediately and without access to my laptop.

In any case, has anyone experienced this? Why would this happen? It's really very disheartening. Not only annoying and inconvenient. But if this is a bug on the S4. I want OUT!

Otherwise, I really love this phone. I can't believe this is happening.

I'm not backing up my contacts on my SIM. Something I hate to do but I have no choice. I hate the redundancy.

If anyone has any insight, I would appreciate it. I've fixed the issue but haven't gotten the root cause and that bothers me to no end..

 

[Joe_Perone]

I've googled and have been trying to figure out why my S4 is deleting all my contacts from it. I have my contacts synced with my gmail contacts and this has been the case for years. I had a Samsung Infuse before this and have never had a problem. I've had the S4 for about 3 weeks now and this hasn't happened until yesterday. And since yesterday it has happened 3x's. At first I thought it was a Trulia app (realestate app) that I was using to try to call some realtors. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence but the first 2 times I was on the app and my contacts disappeared. How I recovered them was through the contacts recovery feature on Gmail. Thank goodness for that! I would be SOL if I were out and needed to call someone on my contacts list immediately and without access to my laptop.

In any case, has anyone experienced this? Why would this happen? It's really very disheartening. Not only annoying and inconvenient. But if this is a bug on the S4. I want OUT!

Otherwise, I really love this phone. I can't believe this is happening.

I'm not backing up my contacts on my SIM. Something I hate to do but I have no choice. I hate the redundancy.

If anyone has any insight, I would appreciate it. I've fixed the issue but haven't gotten the root cause and that bothers me to no end..

What I did was first edit all my contacts on my phone how I liked them, then imported the contacts to my SD card from Contacts > Import/Export > Export to SD. Then I deleted the contacts from my phone entirely, and when that was done I made sure the GMail Sync was turned on and went to my computer and logged into GMail. I transferred the Contacts.vcf file from my SD card to my computer, and imported them into GMail. After a few minutes of uploading, my phone automatically synced my contacts from GMail that I just uploaded. Now whenever I edit a contact on either my computer or the phone it reflects in the opposite location, which is exactly what I wanted. If you have to make a new contact on your phone after that, make sure you select the contact type as Google contact. If you do this, your problems should be solved without backing up contacts to SIM. Hopefully I helped you tackle the root cause. Kind of convoluted I know, but what can you do

 

[inquisigirl]

Thanks for the response. But this is already what I have. I guess I didn't elaborate that I do have my contacts synced on my s4 AND gmail. I have it to perpetually sync and this has worked like a charm for ages now. But since writing this post, i've had to restore my contacts on gmail and resync TWICE! I'm up to my wit's end today. I even want to walk over to the ATT store and I really hate to call defeat on this. I've unchecked sync on my phone since I don't want to have to go through this restore on Gmail contacts again. But this really is an issue. I'm not at all sure what's going on. I've even seen all my contacts on my phone disappear in front of my eyes! Something is happening on my phone and I'm worried that it has been hacked perhaps?

 

[Joe_Perone]

I don't think it's been hacked. It's more likely just a loop within the phone. Like I said, I had that problem initially until I went back in and followed the process I said before. If it keeps erasing, then there is a problem with the communication between your phone and GMail. Like you said, perhaps you should turn off Sync until the point to which you are able to solve the problem? Other than that, I'm sorry I can't be of more help :-\

 

[inquisigirl]

Thank you so much Joe Perone! And this is one of the big drawbacks of "cloud" computing. I was all for it until today! I've turned off sync and so far so good. But I'm just baffled.

If anyone else knows why, I'd appreciate it.

 

[Joe_Perone]

You're welcome, glad I could help you out!