Help Ringtone not an option for individual contacts

[nickib]

Okay, so they swapped my "possessed" Moment for an Intercept. Only had it about 16 hours, so far it's okay. It has to be better than the Moment - I couldn't get anything to continuously work right.

I want to have custom, individual ringtones for certain contacts. The manual says it should be an option when you hit the menu bar when editing a specific contact. There is no ringtone option when editing a single contact!

Anybody else run into this? Any suggestions?

 

[DiamondPixieDust]

when u get to the contact click the first button on the touch part of the phone and then click edit and u can add ringtones to contacts

 

[nickib]

when u get to the contact click the first button on the touch part of the phone and then click edit and u can add ringtones to contacts

Yeah, that's what should happen, but - naturally - I called Sprint and they said, "oh well, must not be an option on the Intercept" . . . so I called Samsung and the girl had to do a hard reset (again I lost any apps that I had already re-downloaded - UGH!) and viola! It's there. Now I don't have an internet connection, so I will hard reset again and see what happens this time.

I asked the Samsung rep if they had a lot of problems with the Moment and she said, "No, not really" - lucky me I guess. Something tells me here we go again . . . .

 

[nickib]

After I did another factory data reset I went into contacts and realized that with EXISTING contacts there is no choice of groups or ringtones - but, when you create a contact all categories are there, including groups and ringtones. I called Samsung again and after talking to them for about 10 minutes they simply told me that it cannot be done. Seriously?

 

[nickib]

FINALLY! I actually got two, not one, but two techs at Sprint who were able to help me with this. The first one just got an Intercept and between he and I we figured out that all of my contacts were in the "Google" group. His were in the "unassigned" group and he had both the "groups" and the "ringtone" options.

From there, I went to 2nd level tech who figured out that because my contacts were imported from my gmail for some reason that was preventing me from editing both the groups and ringtone categories (because they were not listed when editing) for all contacts.

First, we exported my contacts to the SD card on the phone. Then we deleted all contacts on my phone (remember, they were still saved on the SD card). Then we unchecked auto-sync on the Intercept and then went to gmail on the PC & exported my contacts to my desktop then erased all contacts in my gmail account. Then we did the sync on the phone and obviously there were no contacts to sync from gmail. Lastly, we imported contacts from the SD card and viola! They were all in the "unassigned" group and all can be individually personalized with whatever ringtones I want to use. Oh - and back on the gmail on the PC - we just imported the contacts back into gmail and nothing was lost.

One last thing - if you put contact(s) in a group, the entire group will have the same ringtone - you will lose the individual ringtone per contact capability.

Whew! I really think this will be an important tip as people get the Intercept and wonder why the heck the option for "groups" and "ringtones" isn't there for imported gmail contacts. Hopefully this will help somebody down the road . . .

 

[Android25]

Wow, nickib! I have been baffled by this for a week now and could only accomplish it via a ring maker app that allowed me to assign, but it required me to recreate the same ringtone if i wanted to assign it a second time!

Before I do that, I wanted to see if it sync-ed up okay with Google Contacts after you put them back, or if you had to leave the contacts phone only and not continue them as synced with Google? You didn't end up with duplicates when you turned Sync back on, did you?

So b/w that and figuring out how to sort by last name (HOW THEY HECK CAN GOOGLE NOT DO THAT???)...my phone will be GREAT!

Thanks for your help!

 

[kiniaikane]

nickib: Thank you, thank you! After three visits to the Sprint stores in the last week since I got this phone, YOU are the one that helped me! Had other problems with the first phone, so they swapped it today, but NO ONE else could help with the group and ringtone issue!

 

[Android25]

kiniaikane - did you follow the steps he described to get all the ringtone and group options available? If so, are you back to being able to sync with Google or do you have to forgo syncing going forward?

Thanks again!

 

[nickib]

Hi all - you are all very welcome to anything I can help us figure out! Sometimes I feel like we as a collective group of end users know more than the technicians at the other end of the customer service line!

When I was on the phone with the first rep who actually had the Intercept and it seemed like we were on to something, I told him to make sure he wrote it all down because I thought it was an issue that definitely would come up again. I'm not sure if he believed me or even paid attention, but thank God for groups like this one!

I did sync my google mail again and the contacts were not duplicated and they "stayed" in the unassigned group - yeah! I am still a little skeptical about the whole Intercept phone, but I think I am just a little gunshy after all of the issues I had with the Moment. I'm not convinced that these "smartphones" are really all that "smart".

I haven't been able out to figure out a couple of things with the contacts yet - like is there a way to have any individual contact's calls go directly to voice mail? Any option for favorites? I am thinking that these features really aren't available on the Intercept and if so, no biggie. I just got used to having those options from having the Moment for 7 months - lol! I also don't know how to sort by last name, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what the point is of the alphabet on the right side of the contacts list vertically - - - hasn't helped me skip to a specific letter yet!

 

[julie2928]

This is awesome information! Is there a way to mass delete your contacts from the phone once they've been saved to the SD card? I can't believe I have to go through them one by one...I have over 600 contacts! UGH!!!

 

[nickib]

First, we exported my contacts to the SD card on the phone. Then we deleted all contacts on my phone (remember, they were still saved on the SD card). Then we unchecked auto-sync on the Intercept and then went to gmail on the PC & exported my contacts to my desktop then erased all contacts in my gmail account. Then we did the sync on the phone and obviously there were no contacts to sync from gmail. Lastly, we imported contacts from the SD card.

Hopefully this will help. If not, I will try to explain it in more detail.

 

[Android25]

Nickib, do your new changes/additions to those contacts still sync with the google contacts now or are they totally seperate from gmail on your PC now?

 

[nickib]

Yes, they still sync - I just checked the auto-sync in the settings and now we're all good. Hope this helps!

 

[Android25]

Thanks again, nickib. Julie, did you find a way to mass delete them from your phone? I wonder if deleting them from google contacts, then syncing, would take them away...b/c it will take me hours to delete one by one as well!

 

[nickib]

Julie, did you find a way to mass delete them from your phone? I wonder if deleting them from google contacts, then syncing, would take them away...b/c it will take me hours to delete one by one as well!

Yes, by deleting them from google, etc. , it does remove ALL of them, then you can essentially start "fresh" with whatever you have saved to your SD card - - - or, if you want, start completely over and add them as you go.

 

[mommersof2]

Seems to work on my phone. I downloaded an app, just called Ringtones and they are all free, and i was able to select a ringtone when i downloaded. I also downloaded something called handcent sms. You can personalize your texting even more by selecting ringers for each person, but you have to silence your regular text system or it will play both programs.

 

[jedema]

FINALLY! I actually got two, not one, but two techs at Sprint who were able to help me with this. The first one just got an Intercept and between he and I we figured out that all of my contacts were in the "Google" group. His were in the "unassigned" group and he had both the "groups" and the "ringtone" options.

From there, I went to 2nd level tech who figured out that because my contacts were imported from my gmail for some reason that was preventing me from editing both the groups and ringtone categories (because they were not listed when editing) for all contacts.

First, we exported my contacts to the SD card on the phone. Then we deleted all contacts on my phone (remember, they were still saved on the SD card). Then we unchecked auto-sync on the Intercept and then went to gmail on the PC & exported my contacts to my desktop then erased all contacts in my gmail account. Then we did the sync on the phone and obviously there were no contacts to sync from gmail. Lastly, we imported contacts from the SD card and viola! They were all in the "unassigned" group and all can be individually personalized with whatever ringtones I want to use. Oh - and back on the gmail on the PC - we just imported the contacts back into gmail and nothing was lost.

One last thing - if you put contact(s) in a group, the entire group will have the same ringtone - you will lose the individual ringtone per contact capability.

Whew! I really think this will be an important tip as people get the Intercept and wonder why the heck the option for "groups" and "ringtones" isn't there for imported gmail contacts. Hopefully this will help somebody down the road . . .

Worked like a champ... until I added my work account to my email. Sadly there are still several personal contacts that just got dumped into my work contact list thanks to my old crackberry. I guess the only way to stop them from automatically grouping themselves as "work" contacts will be to follow the same procedure turning off the sync for that account, then removing the personal contacts from both the work desktop, and my phone, then re-syncing... maybe.
I'll try it tomorrow when I am back at work. Currently I just turned off the sync contacts option to keep the software from lumping everything back into that group.

 

[jedema]

that worked perfectly. Now all my work contacts are linked under the corporate listing, while my personal contacts are all unassigned and available to assign ringtones.

 

[SBiz]

If you don't have too many contacts that you would like individaul ringtones for, you can also create a new contact under 'phone' with just the person's name or whatever you want to type, choose a ringtone and save them. Make sure if you don't put a phone number for the contact with ringtone that under contacts display options you un-check the "show only contacts with numbers" at the top. Then link that new contact with ringtone to the original one with all the numbers and info. After you do that for all the contacts you want, you an go back and re-check the "show only contacts with numbers" so you don't have those duplicate contacts showing up.

 

[schmidtkdm]

I did this last night and it worked! I read the manual thinking, "Ok, there has to be something here that tells me how to do this..." Thanks so much for posting as I'm sure there will be many more people who will find this helpful.