Syncing contacts with Google and Facebook - which takes priority?

[spooksmcgee]

I have a "phone contact" who recently got married, so I changed her name in Gmail to her new name, "Jane Smith." I noticed when I view her contact information however, her name is still listed by her old name of "Jane Doe," which is what she has on facebook. Now my contact has the profiles linked between fb and google, but why is it using her Facebook name when it displays in my contact list? I assume it might do this if I sorted my contacts by Facebook, however I would think sorting them by "phone contacts" would display the gmail info.

When I click on "edit contact," it even shows her name correctly "Jane Smith." If I click on "unlink contact" it asks me if I want to "separate Jane Doe from Jane Smith?" Thanks for any help.

 

[matthewdlyons]

There are a bunch of threads here about this subject. In a nutshell, Facebook will trump your phone or Google contact info (display name and photo). The only way to retain the display set up in your Google Contacts or phone is not log into Facebook through "accounts" (only log into the Facebook app) or delink the accounts, which could result in a lot of duplicates. If you absolutely want Facebook contact information synced with your phone, you'll have live with the pictures and display names it sends to your X.

 

[Stang68]

Yeah, it really does suck. On vanilla Android 2.1 etc it doesn't do that. The Facebook app actually has an option to sync you Calendar, Contacts, and/or Messages. In a Sense OS or a Blur OS, the app is stripped of that option! Kind of upsetting...

 

[matthewdlyons]

Yeah, it really does suck. On vanilla Android 2.1 etc it doesn't do that. The Facebook app actually has an option to sync you Calendar, Contacts, and/or Messages. In a Sense OS or a Blur OS, the app is stripped of that option! Kind of upsetting...

Not quite true on Sense. Though Sense does draw in Facebook data, you can change the picture or display name of any contact. You cannot do with the Motorola's contact management set up. Very dumb!

 

[wg#AC]

If I had to say anything about Black Berry. this is the one things that they were good at. When it came to the way it imported contact and calendar information was very good. The one and only thing I miss about BB.

 

[matthewdlyons]

If I had to say anything about Black Berry. this is the one things that they were good at. When it came to the way it imported contact and calendar information was very good. The one and only thing I miss about BB.

I'm conjecturing here, but I suspect Blackberry was/is better at contact management because of the high number of corporate/enterprise users. Most corp. IT departments want to control information coming into the devices.

 

[lindycu]

This is supposedly fixed in Froyo, so we'll have to wait.

 

[spooksmcgee]

Okay, well I can deal with it I guess, since I don't mind my facebook info being used by default, but it would be nice if I had the option to fix it in 2.2. Thanks guys for the great explanation.

 

[cjpederson]

I'm having the same problem, but it seems to only be happening to some of my contacts, not all. In my Google contacts, I have a lot of my friends listed by nicknames (Sue) when they have their full name on Facebook (Susan). Or they're listed as "First Maiden-Married" on Facebook, when I only want "First Married". When I sync with Facebook, most of my contacts appear as their Facebook name, as has been described in posts before me on this thread.

The thing is that there's ONE that doesn't act that way, and I can't figure out why it's different. In my Google contacts, she's listed as Jenni Smith, and on her Facebook, she's Jennifer Smith. The Facebook contact is linked to the Google contact just like all my other contacts, but she still appears on my phone as Jenni Smith. I want ALL of them to act like this, but I can't figure out why she's the only one!

Any ideas??

I'm on a Samsung Acclaim (U.S. Cellular) running 2.1.

EDIT: I guess there's more than one contact doing it. So, there's at least two contacts that use the Google contact settings instead of Facebook's, but are still linked to the correct Facebook profile. That makes me think that there's a way to do it, I'm just missing something? Or maybe it's just a fluke.