At war with my contacts...

[happy accident]

Ok, here's my story: I came home today and eagerly setup my first ever smartphone, the HTC Incredible. However, in my overzealous glee, I failed to run the Backup Assistant on my old LG Voyager before activating the Incredible.

I called up Verizon, and the rep was pretty helpful - she helped me to reactivate the Voyager, run the backup utility, and create a "MY Verizon" account, to which the contacts were uploaded. At this point I believe the problem was created. Instead of somehow directly uploading my contacts to my phone, she instructed me to export my contacts then import them into my gmail account. At this point they magically appeared on my phone. I was pretty happy..

That was until I realized that the actual phone numbers where striped from the contacts and appended as "notes". Meaning if I actually wanted to call someone, I would have to edit the contact info, and manually transcribe the number from the notes to the actual phone number field. And I would have to do this around 200 times to get all my contacts.

I tried deleting the contact info and importing directly from the backup assistant, but I almost immediately ended up with doubles when the phoned synced with gmail again. What should I do at this point?

EDIT: Just checked my gmail on a PC - I have duplicated for all my contacts now, on my phone as well as my email...
EDIT: Dulplicates easily removed thanks to gmail browser client. Unfortunately they were also striped of the numbers,

 

[NIKSTORM]

I'm having half of your problem. My contacts are only listed once but some of them have double numbers. I would like to get rid of backup assist without doing a factory reset.

 

[Joker35]

not sure if you want to do this but... take your voyager and incredible to your local verizon wireless store or best buy and they call transfer your number from your old phone to your new phone. vzw has done this for me a couple times free of charge.

 

[VZWBB]

I haven't looked into this, but is there a way from the my verizon website that one can manually delete what backup assistant has stored?

I think once you get it correct, it isn't a problem, but getting to that point can be problematic. I used BA to backup my storm before I activated the Inc, and it brought everything over just fine.

 

[testcellchris]

Phone Book Backups

Their is a way for the phone to acknowledge separate phone books. I had the same problem. First many of my Backup assistant numbers were old so I went into VZW's website and found my contacts. I deleted the old and unwanted numbers. Then I ran Backup assistant on my phone. It added the few numbers I decided to keep in the phones "phone Book". On the same screen their was my Google phone book. I had an option to check one or both phone books that the phone will be acknowledge. I wish I could remember how to get to that phone book screen. You can basically use one or both. Can anyone help me out here reminding me how to get to the phone book selection screen. My best suggestion is forget backup assistant. Use Google contacts. You can export your contacts to your SD card too. That's handy!

I GOT IT! Do this... select Phone, menu, people, menu, view. That will show you what your available phone books are and where to select the one or more that you want to use.

 

[bigdds]

how do you get your phone contacts to google? I want to transfer them all to google and then delete the phone contacts

 

[testcellchris]

Create a Google account and then navigate to contacts on your PC. It will have mobile options Select sync to phone. It will ask for a phone number to sync too. Boom their you are. Go to Incredible tips and tricks. I have a long and complete instructional about this issue.

 

[bigdds]

Is it possible to get rid of backup assistant?

 

[testcellchris]

Is it possible to get rid of backup assistant?

Nope, its written into the ROM. It's Verizon junk. Once their is a way to root the phone and new ROM's are written those junk files will be written out or you will have the ability to remove them yourself. If you don't launch it or use it, all is good.

 

[VZWBB]

I ran into another thread that state you can log onto my verizon from your pc and edit or I think delete stuff from backup assistant, so I guess you can clear out old numbers and stuff.

 

[testcellchris]

I ran into another thread that state you can log onto my verizon from your pc and edit or I think delete stuff from backup assistant, so I guess you can clear out old numbers and stuff.

Look at post #5 in this thread.

 

[VZWBB]

Look at post #5 in this thread.

Lol ok...I've been on this site too much looking at too many different threads. Time to stop.

 

[NIKSTORM]

OK NEW PROBLEM SAME CONTACTS THREAD
I have the people widget set on my screen, when i push the icon my contacts list pos up. NOW.... i have noticed missing contacts so when push the search button a new contacts list pops up and the missing people show up....WTF???? how can i get all my contacts in one spot?
also i do not have any groups set up