I seem to have acquired contact lists in the AT&T Address Book, and two different accounts under my Google account. I want to rationalize the lists and be able to manage them from my PC without all these duplicates on my phone.
I also have a lot of contacts in Outlook on my PC.
How do I get rid of the junk on my phone without doing it manually? I like the idea of having the contacts actually saved on the phone, but I can't deal with all the mess.
I maintain a Gmail account for the backup for Android stuff...simple, step-by-step explanations would be very helpful.
I suggest consolidating all contacts into one of the existing Google accounts. This little guide will get everything into one cleaned up, easy to maintain list accessible and maintainable from your phone or computer. To do it follow the steps below:
1. Open the Google Contacts app and tap Menu.
2. Select Import/export, then Export to storage. This will export contacts as a .vcf file.
3. A box will open with the location the .vcf file will be exported to. Write it down. Proceed with exporting contacts.
4. Repeat for the 2nd Google account. Should be able to do exports about the same way in Outlook and the AT&T address books.
5. When there are .vcf files exported for all of the contact lists, put them all in folder on a computer for upload. Make a backup copy of the contacts folder and put it in a safe place. Can never have too many backups.
6. Turn sync of contacts off on the phone. Go to: Settings > Accounts > Google > Select account > Disable Contacts Sync.
7. Delete ALL contacts on the phone. Go to: Settings > Apps > Google contacts > Clear cache > Clear data. If there are contacts in another account repeat as necessary. When done there should be no contacts left on the phone. Turn the phone off.
8. Choose the Google (Gmail)account to be used. Log into the account and open Contacts. Click on More. In the drop-down list select Import.
9. In the next box select Browse. Navigate to the folder of exported .vcf files and select one. Click on Import. Repeat until all the contact .vcf files have been imported to Google. This combines all the lists into the single Google açcount.
10. When import is complete click on More again and select Merge duplicates. Google will scan the contacts list and find duplicate entries. Click on Merge duplicates.
11. After duplicates have been merged, it's best to check the cleaned list for errors. Unfortunately, there is no substitute for manually looking the list over for errors, edits and other changes that may need to be done to really clean up a contact list.
12. When satisfied with the new contacts list, export a .vcf copy for backup and put it in a safe place.
13. Turn on the phone. Check again to be sure there are no contacts anywhere on the phone. If any remain, delete them.
14. Turn on sync of Google contacts for the choosen Google account. The combined, cleaned contacts list will download to the phone.
You're done. You should now have a single, cleaned contact list on the phone, backed up to Google and a backup .vcf file copy.
Android since v1.0. Linux user since 2001.
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