I have my Gmail account setup so that I can utilise the various syncing options between my Desire and Google. I use iCal successfully but am having trouble understanding how best to sync my phone contacts.
I always save a new contact to the phone but it seems that unless I also save them as a google contact on the phone, there is no way those numbers will sync to my Google contacts. Surely I don't have to save everything twice?
simon12 said:
I have my Gmail account setup so that I can utilise the various syncing options between my Desire and Google. I use iCal successfully but am having trouble understanding how best to sync my phone contacts.
I always save a new contacts to the phone but it seems that unless I also save them as a google contact on the phone, there is no way those numbers will sync to my Google contacts. Surely I don't have to save everything twice?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As far as I know the safest method of saving all your contact is to sync them with Google. I only have one set of contacts on my device and they are always in sync with Google, therefore the need for me to keep duplicate copies on my device diminished.
It is also very easy to then access your Google contacts from a PC and make any necessary changes, or indeed make the changes via your device.
Regards
Scott
So are you saying that I may as well just save them as Google contacts to begin with and not bother saving them to the phone or the sim card?
Some days ago, I also started the sync for all of my contact to google because I wanted to have them in some backup place. Now all my contacts are in google and if I create a new one I always create it as a google contact (otherwise no sync of course).
I transfered them the following way:
Contacts -> Menu -> Export to SD Card -> Select Phone or Sim (whatever you are saving on currently) : now you have all your contacts exported into one file
then
Contacts -> Menu -> Import from SD Card -> Select Google: now you should have all your contacts in your "google" phonebook
then
change the contact folder to google (will not show dupliactes)
then
sync with google
I saw that, after the sync, I had various double entries in my google account but you can merge them, works fine.
hope it helps a little with your problem, for me it was the easiest way to sync my phone contacts to google
Related
Right, this is my first smartphone, so can someone explain something to me.
I don't have a Gmail account (I use the HTC Mail thing to access my Sky email account when I want to)
What I don't understand is the whole "Google Contacts" thing?
Where do these contacts sync to?
Can I enter the contacts on my phone and then sync them to the Internet (rather than have them stored on my phone?)
Do I need a Gmail account for this?
Any help and tips would be gratefully recieved.
Thanks
Yes you need a google account,
And yes the phone will automatically sync the contacts to your google account.
Fon22
The google contacts will sync to your gmail account, and be stored on the internet.
Creating a gmail account is fast and easy and you get a rediculous amount of storage (mine is at 7447 MB right now, and I am only useing 200 some MBs and I never delete things and have had the service since 2004).
jock23 said:
What I don't understand is the whole "Google Contacts" thing?
Where do these contacts sync to?
Can I enter the contacts on my phone and then sync them to the Internet (rather than have them stored on my phone?)
Do I need a Gmail account for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
with google/gmail account you have an access to plenty of google services -- google contacts is one of them.
htc desire has it's own People program that manages contacts for you. it can store your contacts for you in three different places:
- sim card
- phone
- google account
if you choose to store your contact as google contact, your phone will automatically submit your contact to google contacts service. so that you can manage your contacts there, sync with other devices/services that can use google contacts service, etc.
contacts stored on the phone or on sim card are, simply put, local to the phone -- not easily available elsewhere (i guess that you have to use htc sync, to push them somewhere)
how it works for me? i keep all my contacts as google contacts, so that when i add contact on my phone, it's automatically available on google contacts service site. most of the time i add contacts using webpage -- as it's faster -- these contacts are synced to my phone automatically as well.
VERY IMPORTANT: do not add birth date to your google contacts on your phone -- such contacts won't sync properly -- they will just disappear from the phone \-: luckly most of my contacts are linked with their facebook accounts -- and People app gets brith date form there.
I can't sync the contacts in both ways... only from the gmail account to the pda. There is any explanation?
Maybe the contacts on your phone are set to be "Phone" contacts rather than "Google" contacts? If you did sync them from Outlook to your phone, then that's the case. To convert all of them to Google contacts, export them to the SD card, delete all and re-import them. Then it will ask whether they should be Phone- or Google-contacts.
Thanks, I will try.
for some reason my contacts on my phone are not synchronizing with my gmail account. The contacts on gmail did sync to my accounts but not vice versa. Any suggestions? I even sync manually from the settings on the phone
make sure you are saving the contacts to google and not to phone storage, when you add a new contact it should ask you where to save, choices being Phone, Google account, or Exchange account.
oh ok gotcha. thanks
Edit: what I did was export the contacts from phone to sd card. I then uploaded all the contact to my google account.
If I saved all my contacts straight to the phone, how would I sync them to my google account. Also, would anyone be able to see my contacts and phone numbers, that was the one reason I didn't save them to google, as I didn't want my contacts to be public.
When adding a contact the first thing in the Information tab says contact type. Select Google each time.
If they are already a phone contact create a new contact for them, on your phone as a google contact, or on your gmail/gvoice account on your computer. name them the same and select link in the top right of their phone contact and it will link the phone contact to google and backup on your google account.
To only show Google contacts Go to people, hit menu, view, uncheck all but Google.
Last night i decided to sort out my google contacts because the ones in the phone were well sorted but the ones in my gmail account weren't. So I exported the contacts to the SD card then i transfered them to my PC and replaced the ones on GMail with them. I made some changes and on GMail and then exported the new contacts to the PC then SD card and then deleted and replaced the ones on the phone. Now both the phone and the Gmail account have the same info on them. After awhile i made a few minor changes to the contacts on Gmail and since then it won't sync with my phone contacs anymore.
In theory i could retry the above process but that would be a temporary fix until i need to change or add something on either the Gmail account or the phone. What can i do to make google contacts sync to my phone? (BTW, I have a stock HTC Desire 2.2 Froyo with the latest OTA update and i'm running Windows 7 on my PC)
Were your Gmail contacts syncing with the phone previously? The default behavior is for changes you make in the browser to appear on the phone right away. This can be toggled on/off by going to Menu/Settings/Accounts and sync and touching "Auto-sync". Check that first, and "Background data" above it are both checked. You will see your active accounts below those two things under "Manage Accounts". If the two boxes above are checked and your Gmail account is listed below, then I'm out of ideas.
I have the same problem - but it seems that I have misunderstud the greatnes of google contacts???
Because it works for me to sync my Desire with the changes I make in my google contacts ON MY COMPUTER - however (and this is what I thought was the cool bit with google contacts...) I cannot sync my contacts on my gmail (on the computer) with my Desire when I ex create a new contact ON MY DESIRE...
Any solutions, missing settings...???
Push contact info from phone to Google
foxhunter123,
When I go to save a new contact on my phone, I usually start at the call history. Let's assume you dialed a new number for someone and now you want to save that number you just called as a new contact.
Touch the plus sign next to the number in your call history. You should get prompt to "Save to People" with options to create a new contact or save to an existing one.
Choose the option you want, then the next window asks you what type of contact. Google, SIM, or Phone. Choose Google and then input whatever other info you want, like their name, etc. Note that if you sync the phone with more than one Google account, they will all appear here, and you need to pick the right one.
Once you save it, it should sync that info to your Google contacts you see on your computer. In other words, the phone will push the new contact info to Google, instead of the other way around.
There are probably several different ways of doing this, but this way works just fine for me. I have an unrooted Desire running the latest stock ROM with all the updates current. If you try this and it does not work, you might be better off rooting and trying out a different ROM, or trying a factory reset.
Double check your settings I mention in the second post, and try the above steps. Good luck and post here again if you are not successful.
Hello
And thank you very very much for trying to help me!
I just cannot get it to work... :-(
I have just exported my contacts from my gmail on my computer using the vcard format (the only format I can find on my Desire when importing?) and then I deleted all my contacts on my Desire and then imported the vcard file so that both the gmailcontacts on my computer gmail and the desire is identical.
But I just cannot get new contacts to apear in my pc-gmail when I add them on the Desire!!!
When I go to settings, acounts and syncronization, everything is tjecked and when I press my google acount it's also tjecked in all 3 options.
However - and this is perhaps the problem... - the date of my syncronizecantacts is wrong - it says 21/112010 but both gmail and calender has the current date...
Is there something that can block the sync of contacts?
I have previosly used HTC sync but that was when I tried to sync my contacts to my pc's outlook and since I'm now 100 % google I don't use it anymore...
I really hope you (or somebody else) can help me... ;-)
Oh and Happy New Year
My google contact sync stopped working a few weeks ago. The last time this happened it was down to a facebook issue. However this time I ignored the problem and use MyPhoneExplorer (free) to sync contacts between Android and PC.
Well I'm out of ideas. At this point, you should try doing a factory reset to see if that fixes it. If not, root and try a different ROM. If the phone is still under warranty you could also try returning or exchanging it.
Well... I took the big step and made a factory reset and now everything just works perfect!
And I now can see why the android system is so great!
A thing to remark though is, that it's a know issue that you have to have a google acount BEFORE you start up the Desire the first time, but I think that it's also safe to say that you also have to have your contacts stored as google contacts before you start up the Desire for the first time!(?)
I also thought that I had to import my contacts to my Desire wich isn't the case since they now come automatically from my Gmail (Googlecontacts on my pc/the internet) to my Desire... ;-)
Another very huge advantage with doing the above is that after installing all of my programs again I have still 50 MB free where there previously only was 26 MB left...???
My biggest problem now is that I have to start all over in Angry Birds and seasons... Or is there a way to restore my levels completed in the games?
Foxhunter123 said:
Another very huge advantage with doing the above is that after installing all of my programs again I have still 50 MB free where there previously only was 26 MB left...???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That sounds like the Contacts memory leak problem.
See:
http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/127440-internal-memory-again.html
Next time, before doing a factory reset, try clearing data for both Contacts and Contacts Storage from the Application Manager. The Google sync should kick in shortly after and put everything back on your phone from your Google account.
Something that I thought should be simple but strangely (for Android) it's not.
If you get sent contact details in a vcard, it gets saved to the phone memory. I still can't see how to save that vcard info to my Google account.
Anyone got any ideas? A feature I've missed? An app? I use Handcent but that's a bit poo for vcards so I have to go back to the native Messages app to even view vcards.
Any ideas???
+1
I too need it, by far couldn't succeed that. It would be the best way to keep your contacts with details that sim cannot store.
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App
This is the response I got from HTC when I asked for any method they know to get contacts from the phone to the Google account:
I would advise you to savbe the V-Card to your phones memory, so that it show in your contacts. Then in the People app, press Import/Export then Export to SD card. Choose the contact you wish to export. We have now exported a copy of that contact to the memory card. Now.. We are going to import it back into the phone as a Google contact, so, From the People main screen, press Menu, Import & Export, Import from SD card, choose as 'Google' contact. This will now have made that V-Card a Google contact. If you then Sync your phone to your Google account by going to Menu, Settings, Accounts & Sync, tap 'Sync All' this will send the new contact to your Google account. Then you will be able to see this new contact in your Google Mail - Contacts section.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only problem I had with these instructions is that I found exporting contacts is all or nothing. You can't pick and choose. Luckily for me, all my contacts are on my Google account so it was only the one vcard sent by MMS that I wanted to transfer over.
HTH
Hi guys,
I seem to have cocked up my contacts through a load of synchronising and messing about.
I now need to delete ALL my phone contacts but NOT the Google contacts (because I want to import the Google contacts after).
The problem is, everytime I delete a phone contact (ie. Have only PHONE visible in contacts list and delete) it also deletes from Google (even though Google is hidden).
This is probably because they're linked contacts... but I have HUNDREDS of linked contacts, also with Facebook etc to show the photos. It took hours setting up all the links and I don't want to break them.
What do I do? :-S I'm really confused.
Thanks
Matt
PS: This came about because I'd accidentally been adding NEW contacts to Google rather than my phone. All I wanted to do was get the 10 extra contacts from Google onto my Phone also (then link them). So i exported the Google contacts to SD card and then imported them to phone from SD Card. It created duplicates on the phone (so now there's 2x more contacts listed in the Phone storage).
Did you try disabling synchronize for google account before deleted action?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
thanks. Tried and it doesn't help. I disabled all synchronisation, unchecked Contacts in the Google account... and it still deleted it.
Re-enabled sync and hoped it would still have a copy on the Google account but it hasn't, it really deleted it.
:-S
But you've the vcf file from your last backup process in your sdcard right?
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
yep i just exported google contacts to SD card so I have a copy.
I just want to delete ALL phone contacts and re-import.
When I delete a phone contact though it deletes the Google contact also! And god knows what happens to the Facebook contact (not risking deleting one that's linked to Facebook)
Hej,
When you initailly set up you phone, you setup HTC sync & Google Sync by default. 1. Disable Google Sync, it will delete/not show all the synced google contacts
2. Create a Google Exchange account & sync.
3. Enable linked contacts with facebook (or you can disable facebook sync altogether as I did so as not to have duplicate entries (having mobile number of John twice)
Hope this helps
PJS
thanks for the replies guys.
I've fixed it as follows...
Deleted Facebook account.
Deleted Facebook for HTC Sense account
Deleted all contacts (also from Gmail)
Restarted phone
Imported SD card to Google
Resync'd
Added Facebook accounts
Relinked everything.
What a ball ache! :-S
Thanks again