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Help Same phone number/multiple contacts

abug2006

Lurker
Jul 1, 2009
3
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I am having a problem with people having the same phone number in my gmail contacts. For example, if two people work at the same company and they both have the same phone number it tells me one of them is calling when it really is the other. Is there a way to fix this?
 
I am having a problem with people having the same phone number in my gmail contacts. For example, if two people work at the same company and they both have the same phone number it tells me one of them is calling when it really is the other. Is there a way to fix this?

Don't think there is ... no way for the caller ID OS to ID the exact caller .... I would just enter the Company Name and the Phone number ... that way you know it could be either person ...
 
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I have the same issue. My mom and dad obviously have the same home number, but my dad pretty much never calls from the home number, it's 99% my mom. When I get a call on my droid from the home number, it always says it is my dad. There's no way of setting defaults or anything? I just ended up deleting the home number from my dad's contact.
 
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At a guess, it's likely listing whichever contact is first in the default sort order. It just looks thru the list untila # matches & then displays that name.

There is NO way for the phone to know who dialed at the originating end. Not to be smartarsed, but if your cousin called from your mom's home # would you expect the phone to know?

GVoice can help tho - it can request callers announce themselves. :D
 
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Well yeah I know there isn't a magic genie inside the droid to know who is calling, all I wanted was a way to set it so if a phone number is shared by multiple contacts, you can select which person is shown by default whenever that number calls you. When it says my dad is calling, without me looking at the number and realizing what's going on, it throws me off. But I guess there is no way to do this, so as of now my solution is to delete the home number for my dad.
 
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I was looking for a solution to this but from the other direction. I call Home via my wife's contact information, but my Son's contact info shows up. I deleted his home number and it switched to my other son. I think that if you dial from a specific contact it would show that contact as who you are calling. Maybe it is a bug.
 
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I'm right there with you. I hit the button to call my mother at home, and the call screen says I'm calling my father, since they have the same number. Not a huge deal, since I'm still calling the right place, but it's a bit unnerving to see a name other than the one I clicked come up.

Even weirder, at first every time I tried to call my wife, it would bring up the name an photo of an ex-girlfriend who has an entirely different number. It would dial correctly, but the call log would record a call to my ex instead of my wife. I ended up deleting the ex and re-adding her, and that seems to have fixed it, but it was still a weird bug...
 
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This isn't Droid specific. I also have the same problem on my BB. And I agree with the poster who said it seems to pick the first one listed in your contacts list. I think I'm going to edit them and create a single entry for "Home", remove the home number from all the separate contacts. I usually call family on their cell phones anyway. For work, I'll create one under my company name with the main switch number -- may need to put an underscore or a before the company name to put it at the top of the list. I still need the individual numbers with extensions for each person for work.
 
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While some folks felt it necessary to ignore the actual question and spend their time belittling the OP, this is actually a fixable problem.

The OP wasn't asking that the phone somehow know who had dialed from that number. OP wanted to be able to control what contact displays. Removing phone numbers from contacts is one way, but that cripples a lot of the other contact functionality (you get a call from someone who says "call me at work", you long press the Recent call entry, and call them at work...wait...no work number...go look up the company contact).

All that's required is a way (long-press, menu button, etc.) to access a setting for any given number. This setting would say, essentially, "Display this contact when this number is involved."

Now, you set everyone up as you normally would. When you get one of those irritating mis-ID'd callers, you just go in and create a new contact just for that number (in the OP's case, he'd just select that setting in Mom, instead - no new contact needed).

Every future call from that number (in my case, businesses are the issue) would show whatever contact you specified as the Show Me contact for that number.

If no contact is selected as a Show Me contact, the phone reverts to the current behaviour, which works appropriately in most cases, anyway.

For those who don't see how much of a problem this is, imagine you work at (or have as a client) a large company that routes all calls through a switchboard. You may have literally dozens of contacts at that company. An incoming call would always identify the first contact in the default search. With the Show Me setting, you'd have an additional contact set up for the company (let's say IBM). Now, when anyone from IBM calls (showing the main trunk number), you just see that IBM is calling.

I'm not an advanced enough programmer to implement this, but the change in logic is relatively small. This could actually be added to the standard Android contacts app during a future release.
 
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Ok..I've always been one of those people who only read through the forims when I csnt figure something out (which is often), but never one to post in them. However after reading thru thos thread in hopes to learn how to fix the duplicate contact issue...which in my technologically inept mind is a very valid question, I came across something that I see in almost every post I read...So..I registered my email, logged in, and now I am posting my first and probably only post simply bc I find the following to be very very annoying. There is always one person (sometimes 2) in every post who responds within the forum in a manner that has me wondering if God himself has come down from above and excused this seemingly knowledgable electronically gifted human being from speaking to other less fortunate souls with respect and courtesy because his ability to understand all things electronics places him in a position far superior to that of say someone who sometimes can even figure out how to turn her phone ON. And it is with this permission from above that I without fail almost always encounter a rude self inflated condescending response by one of these chosen ones?... or are people just that rude on their own? Just puttin that out there..
. :)
 
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