Merging PHONE contacts with GMail contacts

[tap50]

If you create a new contact on the Samsung S5 and choose PHONE instead of your Google account. The contact does not sync with Google. Is there a way to merge the PHONE contacts with your Google contacts so that all of your PHONE contacts now appear in your GMail Contacts? In my old Thunderbolt, it was as easy as choosing which device (phone,sim, or Google) you wanted to change to when editing the contact. You can't do that on the S5 and I don't see any MERGE feature.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[anon(5600632)]

You can't "MERGE" them, but you can get where you want to go. In the Phone contacts, use the menu to export those to a file, which will be a vcf (there's a submenu to do this in batch rather than one card at a time). I'd recommend copying that contacts file to a regular computer or emailing them to yourself at this point. Then, on the computer, open your Gmail and import the file into Google contacts.

You also want to stop using "Phone" as a place to put contacts. Using the "contacts to display" option, select just google and work exclusively with that. It does not ask you for your default contact location, but once you select Google exclusively and make sure you put your next contact there, it should stay with Google.

 

[tap50]

I thought of that, but I couldn't figure out how to just export the PHONE contacts, it exports all of them. I do have some that are already Google contacts. If I export all contacts and then import them into Google, what does Google do with the duplicates? Will I have two of the same contact or is Google smart enough to know that one already exists and it won't import it.

Thanks,
Todd

 

[anon(5600632)]

Make sure you are displaying only the phone contacts, then do the export. I'm not sure if that will pull the Google ones or not, but it does not matter. Duplicates within google contacts are not a problem. There is a menu option to find and merge them and it's quick and painless.

So go for it!

 

[tap50]

Thanks!