AT&T Galaxy S8 S5 -> S8: most contacts will not transfer?

[gotdurt]

I recently updated to a S8 Active from my S5 Active, and the girl at the AT&T store transferred my contacts... or so I thought.

After I got home, I discovered that most of my contacts were missing; the new phone only showed 23 of the 95 contacts that were (still are) on my old phone. BTW, they gave me a new SIM card, so I didn't get to try transferring any by SIM.

I tried just transferring them via bluetooth; in the contacts app, I selected all on the S5 and "shared" them to the S8... 1 contact was transferred... I also noticed that when I select the contacts individually, I don't get an option to share; only when I select all...

After doing a search on the S5, I found a text file called "export_contactsvcf.txt" that contains most of the missing contacts (there were other contact files as well, this is the only one I opened thus far), so I'm thinking there has to be a way to manually cut/paste these entries from one file to another, but I'm not finding the same files on the S8. Anyone know how, and which file to edit on the S8? Is there another manual method?

 

[chanchan05]

Use Smart Switch. It's Samsung's program for transfers and backups. Just download it on the S5, and it should be preinstalled in the S8. Run them and follow the prompts.

 

[gotdurt]

I believe that is what she did; she did have me download Smart Switch on the S5 before the transfer.

With that said, there has been a new development... I did some digging and discovered that the files that weren't transferred somehow got "linked" to an app on my phone called "Who Are You" (companion to Youmail). I contacted Youmail and was told to try unistalling the app, and see if it would dis-associate with them... I did, and it deleted the contacts!

It gets better... and worse, lol.

I plugged in my old S3, which should have many, if not most of the missing contacts. I transferred again via bluetooth, and then went to check the contacts on my S8... they all transferred, along with over 300 email contacts from who knows where (many were just random email addresses from my email history, not actual contacts).

So... new problem: How do I get rid of these email contacts, or set it to view only contacts with phone numbers? My old devices have a setting that allows me to view only contacts with phone numbers, but I can't find such a setting on the S8...

 

[mary beth hale]

Go into phone app >tap 3 dots upper right>tap settings>my first setting is a toggle for "hide contacts without numbers"

 

[mary beth hale]

If all of those email contacts are saved in Google, you should be able to go to Google contacts in your browser and edit/delete them from there.

 

[gotdurt]

So it turns out that for some reason they omitted "hide contacts without numbers" from the app itself, but if I go through the "phone" app and then open contacts, it is there...

There are a lot of similar changes on this phone (compared to my S3 and S5) that don't make much sense. It is also missing quite a few features and functions, like they went backwards for the purpose of dumbing-down... it is becoming more like my iPhones, lol.

 

[mary beth hale]

I know... Seems counter-intuitive. You would automatically think that setting would be in the Contacts app.