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Help New to Evo and having a problem-hope it is an easy fix!

ashevo

Lurker
Aug 25, 2010
4
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Hi, My name is Ashley and I'm a new evo user.

I'm having an issue with my phone, and googling brought me here, but no fix to be found. I hope it is something simple I'm missing.

Every person I have ever responded to or emailed through my gmail account (which is used for business, so the number is in the thousands) is now listed in my contacts. :eek: Not when I go through people, but if I start typing to enter a contact, or set an image as a contact icon, I have to scroll through people's emails that I never want to contact again, most are strangers. Is there any way to remove all the gmail contact emails, but keep "my contacts" from gmail (where most of my personal phone list is located)?
 
I have to scroll through people's emails that I never want to contact again, most are strangers. Is there any way to remove all the gmail contact emails, but keep "my contacts" from gmail (where most of my personal phone list is located)?

I see two solutions to this issue.

1. Consider making a new gmail addy for personal use so this does not happen in the future. Create if from a desktop, use more options>export to export your contacts and then import them into your new gmail "personal" acct.

You can always add the business email as an additional email account on the phone so that you still get you emails, but you are only syncing contacts to the personal accnt

Actually #2 doesn't appear to be a real option...I thought there was a setting in Gmail from a desktop so you could make a selection to choose not to save everyone you respond to into your contacts but I am not finding that selection.

If one could find that you could go in through the desktop and delete all of those unwanted contacts that you don't know and would never contact again , uncheck the selection (that may not exist) and then not have to worry about them being added in the future.


I personally have 3 gmail accounts...and only have one tied to my phone.
 
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Welcome to Android Forums! Glad you signed up! We look forward to your participation! :D

did you really just post that and not answer her question???? oh, the irony of that "participation" bit. Yet you have a ton of thanks. go figure.


@Ashley:

I noticed the same thing. Basically, everyone you ever email is considered a contact in gmail. I really hate this about gmail, but before I had a phone, it was a non-issue. The problem arises when you sync your gmail contacts to your phone.

The phone has google contacts, and it has phone contacts. My phone contacts were automatically transferred to my phone from my previous phone when I activated it in the Sprint store. But when I inadvertently synced my gmail contacts, it create all these google contacts in my phone, and at first glance, it's not clear how to tell them apart. So I had a bunch of duplicate entries: people who were both my phone contacts and gmail contacts.

Once I realized what had happened, I turned off contact-syncing in gmail's sync settings, and I manually deleted all the useless contacts. AFAIK, there's no quick way to remove all those contacts without also losing your phone contacts. Later, facebook's sync polluted my google calendars with tons of birthdays. And hiding the facebook calendar on the phone did not remove all these birthdays from my calendars when I viewed them from a computer. So I had to manually remove all the birthdays. Took me hours.

So now, I don't sync any contacts from anywhere. All I need in my phone are my phone contacts. I think this is a case of too much integration.
 
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Thank you Mr. Ed & Novox, I appreciate you taking the time to help me. I'm going to try the alternate gmail address solution-still receiving my business emails, but sending my personal contact list over to the new account and only synching that one.

I had spent ages trying to find a way to turn off the auto-contacts in google, too, to no avail. It never bothered me before the phone sync.

Now I'm afraid of Facebook syncing, thanks to your warning I'll be sure to not check that box.
 
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There is one caveat to following the first method suggested by Mr. Ed, unfortunately. Because my business gmail was the initial one configured to my phone, removing it (necessary to change the sync setting and remove the contacts if I'm reading correctly) will restore the Evo to factory defaults and delete all my data. Blech. :mad:
 
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Can anyone confirm this. It was my understanding that this would only affect purchased apps. Anything else could be backed up to your sd card with mybackup and restored under the new gmail acnt. Including ONLY the contacts you want to transfer. My backup has a free 30 day version in the market.

There is one caveat to following the first method suggested by Mr. Ed, unfortunately. Because my business gmail was the initial one configured to my phone, removing it (necessary to change the sync setting and remove the contacts if I'm reading correctly) will restore the Evo to factory defaults and delete all my data. Blech. :mad:
 
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1.find your "people" address-book "widget"

2. open it

3. hit menu-->view-->unselect (if selected of course) "auto gmail contacts" and/or "google"

make sure what you want to view is saved under "phone" contacts (and you can link those to your google contacts and they shouldnt be "unviewed" by this method

you can also view/unview your Facebook contacts in this widget , this way, if you have them sync'd to your phone...


re:FB issue
posted a facebook unsync method i discovered yesterday, kept me from spending the "hours" manually removing things...

http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-tips-tricks/157297-unsync-facebook.html

early in thread..how to turn off birthdays in calander, later in thread how to remove all FB contacts...worked like a charm..

hope this helps

shanty
 
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I found I had that issue as well. Every Tom, Dick and Harry that has ever interacted with me via email is stored in Gmail. I just found under my contacts that I had 570 plus "other" emails. I just went in and cleared all that crap out. It still retained all of my contacts that I have in other boxes. Maybe you are having the same issue.... I have yet to see if the phone will follow but I would imagine it will when it next syncs with Gmail.
 
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