Best way to handle Contact recovery?

[EisBlade]

I'm rooted, and have installed several different many times as I check them out. One of the things that has been most frustrating, is how my simple phone contacts are now connected to Google, and multiple instances of other (duplicate) phone and Google of the same contact.

How is this happening? When I flash a new ROM, I skip through all screen setups, click on People, and then Import my contacts from the .vcf file on the SD card. This way, when I exit and set up my Google account, they are only syncing. I really don't care to have Google back up my phone contacts if exporting them to a file on the SD card will work just as well.

What are the differences when we open/edit a contact in our People list? Why does a simple contact with basic information now have Google bits, or duplicates. And, if I unlink them all, and delete all except for one last remaining 'unique' contact - I could literally lose ALL phone numbers and addresses that I used to have. Grrrr.


Thanks!

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I'm rooted, and have installed several different many times as I check them out. One of the things that has been most frustrating, is how my simple phone contacts are now connected to Google, and multiple instances of other (duplicate) phone and Google of the same contact.

How is this happening? When I flash a new ROM, I skip through all screen setups, click on People, and then Import my contacts from the .vcf file on the SD card. This way, when I exit and set up my Google account, they are only syncing. I really don't care to have Google back up my phone contacts if exporting them to a file on the SD card will work just as well.

What are the differences when we open/edit a contact in our People list? Why does a simple contact with basic information now have Google bits, or duplicates. And, if I unlink them all, and delete all except for one last remaining 'unique' contact - I could literally lose ALL phone numbers and addresses that I used to have. Grrrr.


Thanks!

I actually do it the other way around...just let Google sync everything to GMail account, and then when I install a new ROM, I just let the sync restore all my contacts for me (I usually back them up, just to be safe, but have never had to restore from file).

I will say this -- when I first got the Android I had to do a little bit of tedious leg work by going into GMail and "tidying" up all of my contacts. Personally, I wish it would only sync "My Contacts" as opposed to "All contacts", but none the less, I just went in and fixed everything online (merged duplicates, deleted junk contacts I don't need, edited names, etc), and now it works perfectly.

 

[SoDev]

After much pain and suffering... I went Pete's route.

 

[dpham00]

I just export to sd card, and uncheck the Google contacts in the people app.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

I just export to sd card, and uncheck the Google contacts in the people app.

That is a good point -- If you've saved contacts to the "Phone" storage, you will want to back those up manually. I personally try not to save anything there, but a good thing to check none the less.

 

[EisBlade]

That is a good point -- If you've saved contacts to the "Phone" storage, you will want to back those up manually. I personally try not to save anything there, but a good thing to check none the less.

What my goal is would be Not to have Google be a part of my contact backups. I want to keep those manual. So, to do this; from People - I just export to SD card, and select Phone and ignore the google email address option?

The cleanup process here appears very messy. I went into one of my contacts, selected to Edit, clicked on the green link button to unlink it, found 7 listings for phone and 2 for Google that it wanted to "link" to, and unlinked it from those. Afterwards I exited that contact, found about 5 duplicate entries in the People listing, deleted all but 1, opened it, and had NO information in it...address, email, phone, etc. Good lord! Is there a way to undo what "linking" has done without losing valid contact info? I'll back up manually every day to avoid this, or just go back to backup assistant since I'm carrying chargers with me everywhere anyways.

 

[dpham00]

That is a good point -- If you've saved contacts to the "Phone" storage, you will want to back those up manually. I personally try not to save anything there, but a good thing to check none the less.

personally, i don't want to be dependent on Google to save contacts, just my personal preference.

 

[dpham00]

What my goal is would be Not to have Google be a part of my contact backups. I want to keep those manual. So, to do this; from People - I just export to SD card, and select Phone and ignore the google email address option?

The cleanup process here appears very messy. I went into one of my contacts, selected to Edit, clicked on the green link button to unlink it, found 7 listings for phone and 2 for Google that it wanted to "link" to, and unlinked it from those. Afterwards I exited that contact, found about 5 duplicate entries in the People listing, deleted all but 1, opened it, and had NO information in it...address, email, phone, etc. Good lord! Is there a way to undo what "linking" has done without losing valid contact info? I'll back up manually every day to avoid this, or just go back to backup assistant since I'm carrying chargers with me everywhere anyways.

if you ignore the google address option, then any contacts in the google address will not be backed up. but, it backs them up separetly to the sd card in different files. so, you can choose to back up from the phone, google, and sim card, and then just restore what you want.

not sure about how to fix duplicate entries though, i just manually deleted them, but i only had a few.

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

personally, i don't want to be dependent on Google to save contacts, just my personal preference.

I depend on them to save my email messages, why not contacts too? Not criticizing your point of view, but that's just way I look at at.

I've actually been a bit disappointed with contact management on the Android. I used to sync my Contacts with my GMail account when I was using a BlackBerry as well, and I was surprised that it did a much better job of doing that than Android does.

The first thing I did was export all of my "Phone" contacts (there were not many, less than 10 probably), and then imported them into my Google contacts. Then, I went into my Gmail account onlne and started "cleaning things up". It was tedious, but in the end I had a very clean contacts list that syncs very well with my phone each and every time I need to do a resync (i.e. install a new ROM).

Either way, I like knowing that if I install a new ROM, lose my phone, get a new one, etc., that all my contact info is stored on the server. Like I also said before, I generally will backup all my contact info to SD card before I install a new ROM, just to be safe -- but I were to lose my phone, how would I get all that info back? Even if I had backed it up myself and saved it my computer or Dropbox or something like that, the chances that backup is up-to-date would be slim at best.

Again...different strokes for different folks...just explaining why I do it the way I do.

 

[EisBlade]

I depend on them to save my email messages, why not contacts too? Not criticizing your point of view, but that's just way I look at at.

I've actually been a bit disappointed with contact management on the Android. I used to sync my Contacts with my GMail account when I was using a BlackBerry as well, and I was surprised that it did a much better job of doing that than Android does.

The first thing I did was export all of my "Phone" contacts (there were not many, less than 10 probably), and then imported them into my Google contacts. Then, I went into my Gmail account onlne and started "cleaning things up". It was tedious, but in the end I had a very clean contacts list that syncs very well with my phone each and every time I need to do a resync (i.e. install a new ROM).

Either way, I like knowing that if I install a new ROM, lose my phone, get a new one, etc., that all my contact info is stored on the server. Like I also said before, I generally will backup all my contact info to SD card before I install a new ROM, just to be safe -- but I were to lose my phone, how would I get all that info back? Even if I had backed it up myself and saved it my computer or Dropbox or something like that, the chances that backup is up-to-date would be slim at best.

Again...different strokes for different folks...just explaining why I do it the way I do.

Yep, I like that. Having a (precious) backup of Contacts remotely located off the actual device collected from is preferrable, but what got me started with all this is that I've noticed that ALL contacts are not push/pulled to the online google account suring the sync process.

- I have some contacts with Google "links", and others without. I just logged on and deleted all the contacts collected online to, I don't know, start fresh? It would be nice if there were some instructions or explanation as to how the sync processes work, what they affect, or look for in order to successfully collect/sync data, and what each ultimately means to our contacts.

 

[EisBlade]

Okay, so, I'm trying to figure out how to get All of my phone contacts backed up to the Google account. I logged on and wiped all the existing Google acct. contacts, then from People, exported to the SD card and selected the Google account. Of my 300+ valid phone contacts, only 85 are connected to the Google account. Then I did the same thing, backing up to the SD card, but this time selected Phone contacts. 1,6 89 contacts backed up this time...which includes All original 300+ phone contacts as well as all the duplicates that have been created and are now $#@! linked together. Therein lies my unsolved problem. At the moment, the only success backup process for Contacts doing the job 100% is Verizon's Backup Assistant. This sux zits. phbbbbt.