Help with Contacts

[Kimitae9499]

Help! I am not clear on how to use the "link" feature..Link to all etc. Any expalantion would be great!

Thanks!

 

[IOWA]

Link to what o.o

Tapatalk. Samsung Moment. Yep.

 

[Starfleet Captain]

It would help if we knew what type of device you have. MY only experience with Android is with my current HTC Evo 4G. So, I had to figure this out recently. Basically, when you put in your facebook, twitter and gmail accounts, your phone auto-magically grabs all your friends and contacts from these sites and downloads them to your phone. Now if you open your contacts, you will see only the contacts you physically pit on your phone AND the contacts downloaded from your gmail account. AT the bottom of the screen, you will see 4 icons, which represent different screens with different options. Scroll to the third one, which should look like a globe, which represents your "ONLINE CONTACTS". tap the online directory of your choice and it will bring up your online contacts from the corresponding online service. If the phone finds a contact in your online database that is "very similar" to a contact in your gmail or phone directory, a link option is available to link the two contacts together.

For example, say I have a cousin named William Rufus and his contact info is stored in my phone or gmail account. Now, William is also a friend on my facebook account under the handle "Billy Boy". So, now I have a contact named Billy Boy on my phone's online directory and a contact named WIlliam Rufus in my phone's main directory, even though these are the same person. Since the two will likely have similar email addresses, the phone will give you the option to link the two contacts together. By choosing to do so, the phone will automatically sync the data together on my main contact list, so the next time I view the contact on my phone, I can see his stautus updates and his profile picture.

A lot of times, the phone may not recognize that two contacts should be linked, in which case, you manually do it. Or, the phone may incorrectly assume that two contacts should be linked when they shouldn't. In this case, there is an option to remove the syncing option.

As I said before, this is the way it works on my Evo. I don't know if your device behaves in the same manner.

 

[IOWA]

It would help if we knew what type of device you have. MY only experience with Android is with my current HTC Evo 4G. So, I had to figure this out recently. Basically, when you put in your facebook, twitter and gmail accounts, your phone auto-magically grabs all your friends and contacts from these sites and downloads them to your phone. Now if you open your contacts, you will see only the contacts you physically pit on your phone AND the contacts downloaded from your gmail account. AT the bottom of the screen, you will see 4 icons, which represent different screens with different options. Scroll to the third one, which should look like a globe, which represents your "ONLINE CONTACTS". tap the online directory of your choice and it will bring up your online contacts from the corresponding online service. If the phone finds a contact in your online database that is "very similar" to a contact in your gmail or phone directory, a link option is available to link the two contacts together.

For example, say I have a cousin named William Rufus and his contact info is stored in my phone or gmail account. Now, William is also a friend on my facebook account under the handle "Billy Boy". So, now I have a contact named Billy Boy on my phone's online directory and a contact named WIlliam Rufus in my phone's main directory, even though these are the same person. Since the two will likely have similar email addresses, the phone will give you the option to link the two contacts together. By choosing to do so, the phone will automatically sync the data together on my main contact list, so the next time I view the contact on my phone, I can see his stautus updates and his profile picture.

A lot of times, the phone may not recognize that two contacts should be linked, in which case, you manually do it. Or, the phone may incorrectly assume that two contacts should be linked when they shouldn't. In this case, there is an option to remove the syncing option.

As I said before, this is the way it works on my Evo. I don't know if your device behaves in the same manner.

Auto-magically... lol did you steal that from a car insurance commercial?

Tapatalk. Samsung Moment. Yep.

 

[mikehall]

Is there a way to browse an address list from gmail? I can start typing and it fills in names from my global lists, but I can't browse on people to email. I can do that on exchange, but not gmail.

 

[Starfleet Captain]

Is there a way to browse an address list from gmail? I can start typing and it fills in names from my global lists, but I can't browse on people to email. I can do that on exchange, but not gmail.

nope.

if you have a specif group of people you like to send specif email to, then the easiest wasy is to create this group from thc contacts app. Then when you need to send an email to that specific group, select it from contacts and send the email.

It sucks. But what can you do besides ask google to make their gmail app better, or allow us to use it with the other mail app.

 

[gsd3986]

Ok, on a related note to this thread. I am a noob to Android having had about 10 WinMo devices so this is rather new to me (I like it though). Anyway, I have an Evo 4G which syncs all my Contacts and Calendar items with my phone (perfect). I also run Outlook at home so I want to occasionally sync my phone with my home PC (wired is ok if wireless is not an option since I only need to "update" the home info every so often and never make updates there to Calendar or Contacts). HTC Sync is the software I found but it will only Sync Contacts/Calendars that are in the "local" lists (not Gmail, Facebook or Exchange). My thought was to link the contacts (Local Phone and Exchange) together. So in theory my idea is to update a Contact on my laptop which will feed via Exchange to the Phone and update the Phone's Exchange version of that same contact, then the phone (since it's previously linked the Exchange version & Loca Phone version of that contact together) will automatically sync them, then later when I connect the phone to my home PC, HTC Sync will sync the Local Phone contact with my Outlook contact (and vice-versa). But in practice the phone does not seem to sync the linked contacts internally. Am I missing something? The same seems true for Calendar items. I would prefer to not use Gmail if at all possible since managing 3 Contact lists (Local, Facebook, Exchange) and 4 Calendars (Local, Facebook, Exchange, PCSync) is daunting enough without adding another (Google)!

 

[Starfleet Captain]

Don't know much about Exchange since I do not have one. But, here's a thought:

There should be a way for you to sync Outlook with gmail, provided your computer has a connection to the internet. But, see if Outlook can pull contacts from your gmail account. If it does, then every phone number you have stored on your phone (provided you selected the gmail option) should be uploaded to gmail and (in theory) sync to Outlook. Again, I have yet to try this, but see if it works.

 

[Preachyj]

Is there a way to sort the contacts in the native contacts list? I know it can be done in an app, but I hate having to partition my own brain to use different apps to accomplish a very basic thing on my phone. I really need to sort my contacts list by last name. The contacts entry prompts you to enter given name and surname (couldn't they just have said "First Name" and "Last Name"?), so why can't I sort the list according to surname? I have searched and searched, then finally gave up and downloaded an app, but I can't use that app from within the phone dialer, I can only use the native contacts list there. Really frustrating.