Can't control which Contacts display on my phone

[gailbj]

I have a new Moto G (2nd gen - Android 5.0.2), but have been using Android for several years. I've spent hours scouring the web to find a fix for my problem, and have just spent four hours on the phone with my provider and Motorola's second level of tech support.

Problem: I can't get only contacts with phone numbers to show on my phone.

Ages old names appear on my phone though I've deleted them in my only gmail account; many don't even appear in my Contacts app on my phone. I've deleted the same old contacts over and over again, created a group just for phone and selected that group on my phone, etc.

The tech person from Motorola looked at my phone remotely, seemed to fix the problem. I just checked, dozens and dozens of contacts that I haven't used for years are back and appear in my phone contact list.

I don't even know where the phone is pulling most of those names; the only thing I can think of is from years old sent email.

Some of these names never appeared on my Samsung S3 with an earlier version of Android. Plus, on that phone, I there was a setting to easily choose only phone contacts.

I hope I've explained my problem correctly but, if not, I'd be happy to provide more information. I also hope someone in these forums has a solution! Thank you.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Could those contacts be synced over from Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter? Go to Settings>Accounts, and see if those or any other social network is listed. Tap them and see if there is an option there to sync contacts--uncheck it.

 

[gailbj]

Thank you for the welcome!

After countless hours I finally figured it out. The very, very old contacts were coming in from Outlook.com, which I signed up for some time ago and rarely ever use. In fact, I didn't even recall that there were contacts in it's contact book as yesterday it was the first time I ever opened it. I don't understand why the Motorola tech would not have suggested this since she looked at my phone remotely for some time.

I've deleted all the contacts from outlook.com and deleted the Outlook app. As I said, I rarely use it and from the few mails I receive at outlook they are forwarded from to my gmail account.