Help to sort out the contact list!

[AC Question]

Samsung S5
When I bought the phone it has synchronised by default my contacts from gmail with the phone and now I have a mess - thousands of email addresses in my Phone Contact list that is totally useless.
In addition to that it shows now all my contacts from Skype in the same contacts list
Some contacts also got duplicated for some reason. Duplicated - not the right word" For example there are 5-6 copies of the same contacts Moreover some of them are empty - inside just says "connnected via phone" and has no number .

What's the best way to clean up this mess: E.g get rid of duplicates and leave only the contacts that I have on SIM card?

 

[Rukbat]

1. You DO NOT WANT your contacts on the SIM card. SIM cards go bad, and if yours does it gets replaced and you lose your contact list. SIM contacts DO NOT get synced to anything. Make ALL your contacts Google contacts. (Export your contacts, then import them - to your Google account.)

2. Sync the phone. Look at Google Contacts to make sure you're not missing any contacts. (Don't worry about duplicates and extras.) Contacts not in the phone, but that WERE there, might still be recoverable in More/Restore contacts.

3. Put the phone in airplane mode and delete all the contacts.

4. On Google Contacts, fix everything up (maybe create a backup file - More/Export - first). (In More, you can merge duplicates. Then clean them up - the merge is not the way most people would want it.) Once everything is the way you want it, turn airplane mode off in the phone and it should start syncing. (If not, tap Sync Now.)

If you use a laptop or desktop web browser for Google Contacts, it's much easier than trying to do it with the browser on your phone (and the phone should be in airplane mode anyway).

 

[TJA3500]

You can export your contacts to Google Drive so will have a backup if you don't want to sync to your account.