Question Contacts App cannot merge duplicate contacts from two sources

[gardengal4]

Back in the early days of phone usage, my contacts in my phone were for phone #s. My gmail "contacts" were for email addresses. Over the years Google has stored everything in the Contacts app leading to much confusion and duplicates that aren't really duplicates. Currently my default storage location is my primary google account. But apparently in the past it was "phone" storage. I now have many "duplicates" in different storage locations with different pieces of information. I cannot merge them, they are apparently not considered duplicates. Here is one person who appears in both Phone and in Google. This "Phone" email address showing here is old. In Google this contact shows no phone numbers. the only piece of info is an email address. (and the latest one). But sync does not sync Google account details with Phone contact details.



Here are all my contacts. The account with 433 is only that large because it probably includes every email sender/recipient. I don't need them on my phone but Google wants them there so no fighting that fight.



I used to use Custom on my phone for displaying contacts, but they changed something about that some time ago. Forget the details. I had been able to check off select groups that I wanted to see on my phone. i.e. Friends, Family, Work. So then I switched to displaying my Primary Google account but it misses some people who are ONLY on Phone. Now I have to use All Contacts and I really don't want all that clutter in my searching and scrolling.

Maybe I can go back to using Custom if I could get everyone in one account and in the right groups. The biggest problem is how to easily get the 87 Phone contacts into my Primary google account. Then the 20 from my Secondary account should probably be moved to Primary too. Then maybe I can configure Custom again to be useful.

To manually do this means comparing every fields of two contacts and updating Primary google account Contact entry (I did this on PC contacts.google.com) Had to grab customized profile picture from phone and also make a custom field for Ringtone. Then on phone contact (first pic above) I can finally "remove from Phone" Very tedious. 1 down 86 to go. Is there something I am missing?

btw, Android 9, samsung S8

fwiw I don't use auto Sync. I sync my Primary google account Contacts on demand if and when I make changes. Fairly static usage.

 

[B. Diddy]

It's hard for me to comment on this, since I keep all of my contacts in the Google Contacts cloud rather than on the device only, but I think the Google Contacts app can only merge duplicates if they're in your cloud. I'm not sure if it can merge duplicate contacts if one is only on the device and the other is in the cloud -- this would make sense, since Google Contacts is intended to sync with your account in the cloud, and if there's a contact that's only on one device, it wouldn't be able to incorporate that information into the cloud without actually syncing it.

 

[gardengal4]

Do you only have a single Google account? I have two and my contacts are in both. SImilar situation in the cloud. I think a true Duplicate is per account.

 

[B. Diddy]

Do you only have a single Google account? I have two and my contacts are in both. SImilar situation in the cloud. I think a true Duplicate is per account.

Only one account, and I think you're right about multiple Google accounts as well.

 

[gardengal4]

I wish I knew how they ended up in multiple places and how to unwrangle them.

 

[B. Diddy]

I'd say that this is mostly due to it being not entirely clear which account a contact is being added to. If you have a device that allows the user to add a contact to the local phone storage only (which isn't possible on Pixels, and which is why I never run into that problem), or if you have multiple Google accounts, it can be relatively easy to add to an unintended account if you're not paying close attention.

 

[gardengal4]

probably relates at least somewhat to getting new phone and how the contacts were transferred. I think this is only my 4th phone since the beginning of phone-times.

Every now and then I see a contact in the Group "Imported 3/31/12". No recollection. My oldest contacts are in that group. Just looked at one friend and she shows up in Phone and 3 Google accounts. One google account twice. I guess that one is a legit dupe.

Oy vey.

 

[B. Diddy]

It can really get confusing once you start using multiple accounts, I'm afraid. It may be worth taking the time to consolidate into one Google account (or maybe two at the most). Here's a guide on how to import contacts from one account to another -- it's an old article, but the menu options have not changed significantly: https://www.howtogeek.com/265006/how-to-transfer-contacts-between-google-accounts/

 

[gardengal4]

Thanks. That may help for some contacts. I am concerned with the ones that are in both accounts. Will it "merge" data for same name or just make a true duplicate that's mergable? I'll try out one before hand to see. I envision collisions (or ignoring). And profile pic is a problem. Its still going to be messy because which contact is the more updated one? It varies! what a mess.

I never have logged into my secondary account and looked at contacts.google.com. That should prove interesting and maybe easier to edit/delete and then sync those. That's truly just an alternate email address. (or at least I thought it was!!) Ah maybe it goes back to the time when you could have an email that was NOT associated with a google account. I bet that's related in the origins.

But the ones in Phone are the bigger problem. Those will have to be fully manual. ugh.

Thanks for talking this through with me!

 

[B. Diddy]

I think that if you import a contact from a secondary account that's already present in the primary account, you'll get an option to merge them (either upon the initial import or afterwards).