So, I went to my gmail account to check if my contacts were there and they were. Problem is that there are 5 copies of each of my contacts in there. I have thousands of contacts in my gmail account now. How do I fix this so that there is only one copy of each contact? Thanks so much for your help!
Log into your GMail and contacts from your PC. Any changes you make will be automatically updated to your Android phone...
Check to see if you actually have multiple copies of the contacts, or if you just have them in multiple "groups". If you have multiple recipients, you can check the box and delete from the web, or if they actually have different info because they were imported from different sources, you can select each of them at the same time (check box) then on the right side of the screen click the Merge button, Google will try to merge th contacts as best as possible, show you the results, and if you click save, it will create a single contact from each of the ones you have checked. Within a few minutes, those changes will be pushed to the phone automatically.
As to actually backing them up, again, from the web site, you can export your contacts into several different formats, the easiest of which to deal with is into a CSV spreadsheet.
drdrewh wrote:So, I went to my gmail account to check if my contacts were there and they were. Problem is that there are 5 copies of each of my contacts in there. I have thousands of contacts in my gmail account now. How do I fix this so that there is only one copy of each contact? Thanks so much for your help!
I think this is going to happen when one syncs the gmail contacts with the phone for the first time, especially with more than one group or contacts stored in several places, as in a CSV file or in Outlook and Windows Contacts as well as Gmail.
I tried a few different methods of quickly reconciling the multiple contacts in both the Eris and my Gmail account. I finally just sat down one night, well, actually 3 or 4 nights just before I went to bed watching a couple of late-night TV shows and going through the Gmail account merging contacts until I finally got it all straight. Once I did that, both the Gmail contacts and the Eris stay straight now.
The only thing vexing me now is that when you add a contact into the phone, it DOES NOT get synced with Gmail. You have to add that contact to Gmail manually. Then, it adds the new entry to the phone over the air. So if you've done what I did, you now have 2 copies of the new contact. So I've begun to just add a new contact into my phone notes, then add it to Gmail contacts when I get near my computer.
That's one thing that I REALLY hope Android and/or Verizon address in an update to the phone's software.
Geri O
Mine adds just fine both ways... I'm guessing you have multiple contact lists. If I remember right, at least on Android 1.5 with my Hero and Moment I had, you have to specify which contact list you are adding a contact to when you create it. On the Droid, with multiple accounts, is there a drop-down that asks you this when you create a new contact on the phone? If so, you will need to make sure you choose the Google account that you want it added to. Since I don't have multiple accounts on my phone, I can't give you an "exact" step-by-step, however to see what contact accounts your phone itself is seeing, open contacts, click on the Menu, then Accounts - See if you have multiple accounts defined... if you click on a specific account, you will see the sync options, make sure your "Sync Contacts" is checked on your primary Google account. Not sure if you have multiple accounts if you can select a "primary" contacts account or not...
It might be worth snooping around in the options there.
Just thought I would mention that if you go into Gmail and click Contacts->My Contacts, a Find duplicatesbutton will appear in the right-hand pane. If duplicates are found, there is an option to merge them.
Start a new topic or ask questions in the open forum.
