My google account contacts won't sync but my samsung account contacts are?

[AC Question]

Hi my google account contacts wont sync & its the only one not syncing but in my samsung account my contacts are synced plus all the others are as well. How do i sync my google contacts. My phone is a samsung galaxy mini 1

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Do you mean that the contacts on your phone won't sync to your Google Contacts in the cloud? Or vice-versa?

 

[Pamela Fellers]

My contacts won't sync either. Everything else will but contacts will not. I've tuned off syncing and turned it back in with no luck

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! You're talking about your Google Contacts, and not contacts saved to your Samsung account or local Phone account, right?

When you go to Settings>Accounts-Google>[your account], does it say that your contacts have been successfully synced, or does it say "Sync Error"?

 

[Jez Foster]

Mine is the same, for google contacts account it says "sync is currently experiencing problems it will be back shortly"

All the other Google accounts are syncing correctly and all other accounts on my phone are also syncing correctly.

This has been the same for the last month.

 

[omaharealtypro]

I tried to delete google account and reinstalled it. All synced fine, but contacts still wont sync after first download to phone.

 

[tawagoto]

There are lots of queries like this all over the Internet. Here is what I have figured out. Note that I can't be sure whether what I'm about to say is actually true for everyone or whether my phone (Samsung Galaxy w/ MetroPCS) just isn't working right.

First of all, I **think** that all "sync" on a cell phone means is that it will sync whatever Contacts you have in your Google/gmail account to your Google Contacts list on your phone, and vice versa. The sync feature on my phone does do this. If yours doesn't, then I don't know the answer.

What I have been wondering for a long time and what I **think** the original post-er might mean is: Can you "sync" your Google/gmail Contacts to your "device" Contacts list on your phone? I cannot do this. As I indicated at the beginning, whether the definition of "sync" covers only the process in the previous paragraph or whether it's SUPPOSED to sync Google contacts to Device Contacts, I don't know. My phone won't do the latter.

My phone allows only a limited number of ways to import/export back and forth. I can't import from Google/gmail Contacts to Device Contacts (and as I just said, sync doesn't work for this). What I had to do was go to my gmail account on the Internet, open Contacts there, and export them to a vcf file on my laptop. Then I connected my phone to my laptop via USB to my phone and copy-pasted the file to the appropriate place on the phone. That was the only way to "sync" the Contacts.

My crummy phone also doesn't merge duplicates in the Google Contacts list (there is a Merge item in a menu, but it doesn't do anything). I had to do that from my laptop on the Internet.

I'd like to hear from anyone who DOES have the capability of syncing back and forth between Google/gmail Contacts and Device Contacts.

 

[David33160]

I switched from an HTC One M8 to this Samsung. To my surprise, it appears impossible to simply copy your Device Contacts to your Gmail Contacts, regardless of whether it is being done one at a time or in bulk. The HTC accomplished this very easily. HTC also had a button for eliminating duplicates. Naturally, I believed that the Samsung would be able to do the same thing but I appear to have been wrong.

Today I spent nearly an hour on the phone with ATT and then with Samsung, another hour. Worthless.

What I want is an exact duplicate of the contacts on my device to be on my gMail Contacts. I came here thinking the answer would be simple and that there would be a bunch of threads on it. I found a few, but none with a simple answer. Hopefully I am just missing it and one of you will be able to point me in the right direction.

 

[anon777]

I switched from an HTC One M8 to this Samsung. To my surprise, it appears impossible to simply copy your Device Contacts to your Gmail Contacts, regardless of whether it is being done one at a time or in bulk. The HTC accomplished this very easily. HTC also had a button for eliminating duplicates. Naturally, I believed that the Samsung would be able to do the same thing but I appear to have been wrong.

Today I spent nearly an hour on the phone with ATT and then with Samsung, another hour. Worthless.

What I want is an exact duplicate of the contacts on my device to be on my gMail Contacts. I came here thinking the answer would be simple and that there would be a bunch of threads on it. I found a few, but none with a simple answer. Hopefully I am just missing it and one of you will be able to point me in the right direction.

I had the same problem with my phone, a ZTE. I tried everything. But my fix was very simple.

In my default ZTE contacts app, when I made a new contact (and presumably when you edit a contact) I had to set the account group to my google account for it to sync with google, otherwise google ignores the contact. The group setting was under "more fields" for me but it might be under advanced for you, and the group setting field itself may be called something different. I actually only had to set it once and then it became the default when creating new contacts.

If your contact app doesn't let you set the account group, then try the Contacts app by Google in the playstore. There's a setting to set the default account group for new contacts in the settings (this may be how your HTC contacts app works). You will probably have to edit each contact individually unless you find an app in the playstore that lets you edit multiple contacts at once. Hope this helps!