[resolved] is there a way to delete blank contact groups made by the phone?

c000

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so basically this is what i did. i had some old contacts on another phone, i exported them to .vcf file onto a sd card, then used google to import the contacts.

on my brand new phone, i have the google account sync set up. everything is ok except one thing. on the phone it added some blank contact groups or folders, and i would like to get rid of them b/c i either have no use for them or they are redundant to groups i already made in google.

for example, in my google contacts manager i have

my contacts (which i have blank since i have made custom named groups for specific people)
under that i have:
business
customers
friends & neighbors
family


now in my phone it has

business (which has the contacts from the group i made in google)
coworkers (which is blank and auto-created by my phone)
customers (which has the contacts from my google group)
family (which is blank and auto-created by my phone)
family (which has the contacts from the group i made in google)
friends (which is blank and auto-created by my phone)
friends & neighbors (which has the contacts from the group i made in google)

on top of all this, the groups auto generated by my phone, which are blank, do not show up in google. its like they only exist on my phone or something.
i've tried figuring this out on my own but i can't seem to. is there a way to either delete those blank groups that were automatically created by my phone? its kind of annoying having those blank contact groups, or a redundant duplicate group that i already made.


edit: solution below!

ok after some trial and error this is what i did.

starting in my phone, i made a 'dummy' contact.

0XnkgYG.png


next, when filling out the contact info, scroll towards the bottom and you should see "group name".

1R4JTUr.png



when you click group name, you are met with a list of groups.
Basically what i did was put a check mark on ALL the boxes for all the blank contact groups that my phone premade. this made my dummy contact appear in all of them.


4BJJavW.png



finally, i logged into google, and all those blank, contact groups that my phone created showed up! and because i could not 'see' them when logged into my computer, i was able to effortlessly move all my imported contacts into those phone-created groups. Ultimately since I could not delete the empty groups my phone made, I ended up having to delete the ones that *I* made, to cut down on redundancy. for example:

all contacts in friends & neighbors group (which i made in google) were therefore moved to the "friends" contact group my phone made. After which I deleted the 'friends & neighbors' group.
 
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srkmagnus

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Re: is there a way to delete blank contact groups made by the phone?

On the phone, you can try long-pressing the group or contact and see if an edit option pops-up to delete it. If not, you may need to do the editing via computer by logging into your Google account and editing the contacts associated with the account.
 

c000

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Re: is there a way to delete blank contact groups made by the phone?

unfortunately long press does nothing :(

and no sure what you mean in the second part. the empty groups don't show up when logged into google on my computer.

the only solution i can think of is somehow trying to copy/paste the contacts i put into groups that i made, and moving them into the groups that my phone automatically made.... then deleting the contact group(s) that i had previously made while logged into gmail. but i can't seem to figure out how to do that either :(
 

B. Diddy

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Re: is there a way to delete blank contact groups made by the phone?

Unfortunately, I don't think you can get rid of those blank groups.

Posted via Android Central App
 

c000

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Re: is there a way to delete blank contact groups made by the phone?

edit. through trial and error i resolved the problem. see first post for the solution!

i hope this helps others
 
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Basil Andrea

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Apr 10, 2016
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I have the same problem, i add some contact to this blank group, i synchronized the phone account, log to gmail,
see the group in Gmail but there is no delete

Reg
 

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