Galaxy 7 losing contacts.

[Perezink]

My Galaxy s7 has lost several contacts. It seems to be my most longstanding contacts (not recent entries). When I log into my Google account on a computer, they are all still there. They are only missing on my phone. If I re-enter one of them on my phone, it creates a duplicate in my Google contacts online. I have have checked the settings, and everything is synced correctly.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! When the contacts disappear, what happens if you search for one of those contacts? Also, are you sure those contacts have something in the Name field, or did they only have something in the Business or Company field? In my experience, contacts that lack a Name might not show up properly.

 

[Perezink]

Thanks for the reply. When I search for them, nothing comes up. They do all have names in the name field. They were all working until yesterday. Then a bunch of people just disappeared. They are still in my Google account contacts when I log on online.

 

[B. Diddy]

In the Contacts app, tap Menu>Contacts to Display. What's selected there?

 

[Perezink]

It has "All Contacts" selected.

 

[B. Diddy]

Try wiping the cache partition: https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-30240

 

[Perezink]

I'm afraid it didn't help. Any other ideas? Thanks for all your help, BTW.

 

[B. Diddy]

Hmm. Is it the same contacts every time, or does it vary?

You could try removing your Google account from the phone, then adding it back again.

 

[Perezink]

Yes, it's the same group of contacts. I tried removing my Google account and adding it back again like you said. Still the same problem.

 

[B. Diddy]

Trying to find some common thread -- are those contacts all from one specific Gmail label? Or are they Starred favorites?

 

[Perezink]

Ok, soooo... I figured it out. Sort of.

When I log onto my Google account online on my laptop, and I go to my contacts, I noticed that when I search for a contact that is missing on my phone, I could pull it up online. However, if I just scrolled down to find them instead of using the "Search" feature, then I realized that they were missing from my online Google account as well. In other words, the missing contacts weren't listed in my "Contacts", but if I "searched" for them, they could be pulled up.

Then I noticed that if I went to the pull down menu, there at the bottom was the option to "go to the old version." When I did this, the menu changed from just "Contacts" to now showing two sets of contacts. One listed as "My Contacts" and the other listed as "Other Contacts." All my missing contacts were under "Other Contacts." I was able to select them all and "Add to my contacts" which added them back to my main list and then populated them back on my phone.

I have no idea how this happened to begin with, so I don't know if this fix will last, or if I will have a recurrence in the future.

 

[B. Diddy]

Excellent detective work! I'm not sure what the Other Contacts represents, either. Let me see if I can find out more ...

EDIT: I did a little digging, and saw that the Other Contacts are still present in the newer Google Contacts interface -- it's in the More menu on the left. Basically, it appears that Other Contacts include anyone you've ever emailed on Gmail. So it's possible that those missing contacts were never in your actual Google Contacts, but instead were remembered by Google (since you emailed them at some point), and stored in the Other Contacts category.

This article might help: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2459858,00.asp?

 

[5andrea]

Trying to find some common thread -- are those contacts all from one specific Gmail label? Or are they Starred favorites?

Same problem. I checked to see if it updated without me (I have updates on manual but obviously it updated on its own still because now my texts have an autocorrect function I never had before, and this notification to download some samsung update via google playstore came up) and looks like it did something a couple days ago.

It's all my older contacts too. My friend says my phone number when I call him comes up as the phone number, not my usual photo and name that it displays when I normally call.

 

[5andrea]

Same problem. I checked to see if it updated without me (I have updates on manual but obviously it updated on its own still because now my texts have an autocorrect function I never had before, and this notification to download some samsung update via google playstore came up) and looks like it did something a couple days ago.

It's all my older contacts too. My friend says my phone number when I call him comes up as the phone number, not my usual photo and name that it displays when I normally call.

Screenshot below. Not sure if its authentic or what on earth is going on.

 

[B. Diddy]

That doesn't look like the Play Store -- are you sure it isn't Samsung's Galaxy Apps Store?

Also, did you read Perezink's previous post about finding the contacts in Other Contacts?

 

[magregaard]

Same problem. I checked to see if it updated without me (I have updates on manual but obviously it updated on its own still because now my texts have an autocorrect function I never had before, and this notification to download some samsung update via google playstore came up) and looks like it did something a couple days ago.

It's all my older contacts too. My friend says my phone number when I call him comes up as the phone number, not my usual photo and name that it displays when I normally call.

The same thing is happening with my S7. I ended up here because I need to find a solution to the problem. The device seems to dislike a few of my contacts because when I add them back they do not show back up later when I go to find them.

 

[rudy2gen]

Same problem. Just suddenly lost several of my oldest contacts but not all. Tried the partition thing, no help. Contacts are still showing in Google online. Nothing comes up in the Contacts list or when searched. Even my most frequent contact who has a shortcut icon on my homepage - when I click the icon it says "contact not found". Everything is updated. Frequent contacts are just coming in now as phone numbers. Text threads are retained, but no contact info. Help!

 

[Dano1200r]

Same problem. Just suddenly lost several of my oldest contacts but not all. Tried the partition thing, no help. Contacts are still showing in Google online. Nothing comes up in the Contacts list or when searched. Even my most frequent contact who has a shortcut icon on my homepage - when I click the icon it says "contact not found". Everything is updated. Frequent contacts are just coming in now as phone numbers. Text threads are retained, but no contact info. Help!

This looks like a dialer selection issue. This old thread, with the screenshot shown, is not the native Android dialer and thefore you probably have switched dialers too.