Syncing Contacts

[ddillon80]

I've have had my phone since May and I noticed something that is bothering me. Some of my contacts seem to be disappearing and others have multiple duplicates. What's the best way to add new contacts to the phone and sync them along with contacts already in the phone? I used to use gmail which worked awesome but didn't they stop syncing? For example if I add a new contact to my phone now it says "Contact Type" I then tap the bar and it gives me the option of adding the contact to "SIM", "Google", "Microsoft Hotmail", another address titled "Google" and "Phone" so which one should I choose? All I want is to make sure when I add a contact to the phone it gets synced with something else and I only want a single contact per person. Can anybody tell me how to accomplish that? Thank you

 

[anon(7894520)]

you are probably getting duplicates because you are pulling your contacts from various sources (hotmail, SIM, google, phone, etc.) and they are not set up to sync with each other.


my advice is to chose one source for all your contacts. i find google to be the best one for this.


so what you do in the phone app under the 'Phonebook' drop-down menu just select Google. All your duplicates from all the other various sources should then disappear. Then make sure your google contacts is up to date and every time you create a new contact make sure the "contact type" is set to Google. This option should not change from entry to entry unless you change it.


this will not prevent you however to link your contacts to facebook or whatsapp, etc. if you want to later.


EDIT: if your google stopped syncing (it happened to me once) delete your google account from your phone.

from the Phonebook screen:

options > open account settings > Google > options > Remove.

OR

settings > accounts & sync > google> options > Remove

Then set it up again.

This will NOT delete your contacts on your google account.

 

[ddillon80]

@Troneas I can't thank you enough. That was an awesome answer that I'm sure will work. Thanks again

 

[ajua]

As Troneas said, it's best to keep only ONE source of contacts. Mine is Outlook personal domain (as a Microsoft account) but you could use your Google account. I have set my Outlook account as the default and everything works well and the contacts sync perfectly. The linking between contacts is really good. On the Contacts apps, the only account displayed is this one but all the linked accounts show under every contact.

I can't speak about the reliability of the Google account synching about contacts as I only use it for Google Play but just check that it sync right before choosing it as default if that's what you want. If you choose your Hotmail account, configure it as Exchange, there is no need to download the Outlook app at all.

I would suggest making up your mind about Outlook/Google and go with one of them as the default. You can export and import from one another when needed. Once you have them synched properly, you could manually export from one of them and import it to the other just for keeping a backup of your contacts or in case you need to use that account on a PC/Mac and have all your contacts in both accounts.

 

[likeag8]

my advice is to chose one source for all your contacts. i find google to be the best one for this.

This. For my, Google works the best because I can log in with my Gmail account and edit all of my contacts. Since my Gmail account is my primary email, it seemed like a good choice for me.