I have too many duplicate contacts, usually 7 for each contact. They are pretty much only emails and names. I tried running Contact Analyzer 2, Duplicate Manager, Contacts Utility, and Duplicate Contacts but I still have close 6,000 contacts when I should have maybe 1,000 or less. I even tried to merge contacts; Contact Analyzer 2 merged just over 300 contacts, but I have so many I couldn't even tell a difference. Does anyone have a way to actually delete duplicate contacts or any suggestions?
thanks
This will require a bit of spring cleaning, but once done, it will last for a long time.
First, you need to sort out your gmail account using browser. Each time you send, reply or forward an email message to someone through Gmail, it automatically saves the email address of that person to your contacts list, which will eventually get synced to your phone.
Visit your gmail and go to Settings (cog icon). Under
General tab, look for
"Create contacts for auto-complete" and select
"I'll add contacts myself". This will stop google from over populating your contact list.
Disable Google sync on your device, just for a while.
Now you will need to spent some time and organize your contacts in gmail/contacts. It's much easier than doing it through "Join Contact" on the phone.
When done organizing your account, return to the phone (with sync still OFF), and delete all the contacts from the phone.
Turn the sync back ON and wait for it to load brand new list of cleared contacts.
You will still find some random contacts with whatsapp phone number only, or skype or gmail. Join them to your primary contact (if you have such) by opening it, and do the Join Contact through the Menu option.
Of course, you might have Skype contact without phone number, that's fine.
I would also suggest looking through all the apps that do contact sync. And perhaps disable it.
Keep in mind, people use different mail for forum, different for work and different for social networks. That's how you end up with so many. Joining them will consolidate it into much shorter list.
