Bob Loblaw

Is there any way to convert my a phone contact to a Google contact? When I got the phone I just put in people a phone not knowing that if they are Google contacts, they are automatically backed up in my gmail. Now I want to reset the phone but I don't want to have to redo all my contacts. If they are Google they will be automatically put back on when I sign into gmail after the phone resets, correct?

pdragon

Haven't found a way to change a contact from Google to Phone and vice versa. Just had to recreate them and choose the right option. If you've got a lot of them to fix, it would probably be easier to put them in your Gmail account on a computer instead of entering them in the phone. Next sync, your phone would then have them.

You are correct, if the Contact is a Google Contact, it will automatically sync when you enter your account info after a reset. I'd just double-check and make sure all the Contacts you want are in your Gmail account before doing the reset.

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Bob Loblaw

Crap. That's what I was hoping wasn't going to be the answer. You'd think as smart as this phone is you'd be able to simply edit the contact and change it to Google. Thanks.

T Mac

I just went all through this issue myself last night and this morning. I was trying to sync outlook and google contacts. There is no easy way that I have found. If you enter a contact through the phone it is a phone contact type and doesn't sync with the google contacts. ??? Stupid if you ask me. And, the HTC Sync program is garbage. It duplicates all of your contacts and just doesn't work good at all. The best thing that I found was to export all of my contacts from both outlook and google into .CSV files. Then delete all contacts from both places. Then import both .CSV files back to google contacts. (this was easier than doing it through excel) Google contacts automatically formatted all the info from both files, and also merged quite a few of the matching contacts pretty nicely. And after that, it is very quick and easy to either merge duplicate contact info together or delete duplicates through google contacts interface. By the time I was done with the manual merge, the phone was already automatically synced to google. Tonight I will have to take back the newly exported google contacts .CSV file and import in into Outlook. Then I'll be in sync. It's just too bad there is nothing through google that will do this similar to the google calendar sync that works this well and is free!

Hope this helps.

T Mac

....oh, by the way. Once you import the completed file back into the google contacts and it syncs to your phone, they will all be google contact types in your phone.

moish

i think i made a huge mistake.

jdawg0024

I have exported my outlook contacts to a .csv file and imported them into my gmail and it synced to my phone just fine but none of my contact pictures were there. When I use HTC sync the pics are there from outlook. Am i missing something when I create the.csv file, I would love for my phone to be all Google contacts

dbpaddler

you would think. Kind of annoying because if you add contacts from a webpage or program they automatically go to google. So I end up opening up web outlook and adding it then deleting the google contact. Same with calendar entries. Something goes from personal to work or vice versa, I have to manually change it.

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cij1916

Actually, it's whichever you choose, be default (at first) it's set to phone, but all u have to do is hit the down arrow and choose Google...next time Google will automatically choose Google as default...but look at each contact as you are entering the info.

cajunman4life

The only option I have in the dropdown is "Phone." Something must be wrong...

pdragon

Do you have a Google account set up in the phone?

jimeller

alas there is an app (uk anyway) that converts phone contacts to google contacts. ive used it and it worked perfectly. struggling to remember the name though as i uninstalled once the job was done.

i will have a root around and try and find it.


EDIT: its called contactsync. there is a warning for hero users about it causing instability, but i had no problems at all. just do a nandroid beforehand to be safe.

Last edited by jimeller; 12-09-2009 at 04:01 PM.

slowmotion

ability to change contacts between local and google is a feature in Android 2.0... and one of the reasons i am IMPATIENTLY waiting for Sprint to get a move on with this update!

cajunman4life

Yes. I didn't know you could get by without one

cajunman4life

Seconded.

ikonosin

I ran into this same problem just yesterday. I couldn't figure out how to just change them, so instead I just exported my phone contacts using "ExportContacts" (free in the market). It exported all my contacts to a csv file. I then deleted all my contacts. Next I imported that csv file into gmail (on my pc). Then when my phone synced with gmail, it pulled all the contacts over as google contacts.

Now whenever I get a new contact, I have to add it to gmail then let my phone pull it. Kind of a hassle though.

same here.

Last edited by ikonosin; 12-09-2009 at 09:15 PM.

nick325i

The .CSV file is only text and will not pull a picture. I don't think there is a way to do it other than by hand.

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daman7676

I've been considering the whole google contact vs phone contact issue too. I however do have the option to select either a google or phone as a contact type when I add a new contact.

I'm a heavy Outlook user so I'm just unsure how google contacts will affect everything. I definitely am not a fan that google doesn't separate the name field between first and last.

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slade

Is there a performance difference between the two types of contacts? I have 300+ contacts and I keep them as phone contacts because I sync with outlook and have gmail contact sync disabled to save battery life.

Is one faster loading within the phone than the other? Does one have more fields available? e.g. birthdays, notes, physical address, et al?

Personally, I see no benefit to the gmail sync unless you need it to look up email addresses or something. Anyone have a different view?

cij1916

I use Gmail sync because in the past year, I have lost 2 phones...without backups of my #s, I'm SOL because I remember NOBODY'S #. With gmail syncing, I don't have to do anything, within seconds it's in my gmail account.

durandetto

I currently have a Blackberry Curve and I will soon have a Sprint Hero. So I dled google sync to my BB and synced my contacts to my Gmail account. So will my contacts on my Gmail automatically sync to my Hero once I set it up? If not what should I do to transfer my contacts? I have over 100 contacts most of them have addresses and e-mail and that would take away a lot of play time with my new phone to have to redo.

Ted

dbpaddler

you're good to go. once you enter your gmail info into your phone it will automatically sync everything.

durandetto

Good to know. Thanks for the info.

Bob Loblaw

Figured out a way to fix mine last night. I downloaded an app called ExportContacts. It exports all your contacts in your phone to the sd card in a .csv. I then imported this into gmail. Then I had to delete the repeat phone contacts. Kind of a pain but it worked.

ColynK

Thanks very much for this... you've saved me hours of editing! I've just used ContactSync to change 300+ phone contacts into Google contacts, and I'm in the process of using Google's amazing de-duplicating features to tidy up my contacts.

ColynK

Maybe I spoke too soon.... approx 200 extra contacts appeared in gmail, but I'm now getting an error on the phone saying "android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. - Force close" everytime I try to sync my phone contacts with my gmail contacts. I guess there's some conflict happening, but there's no clue as to which contact is causing a problem... any ideas?

stamets303

I might be too late to answer this but I will anyway. I had a touch pro and set up the google sync with it (WinMo) and yes all mt contacts loaded almost instantly when I plugged in my google account info. So I'd say you're goog to go.

Rich

ColynK

OK I've got my phone straight now... the only way I could do this was as follows....

1. Export all contacts in the phone to the SD card using ExportContacts.
2. Switch off auto updates on the phone.
3. Transfer the phone CSV file to the PC then import the contacts into googlemail.
4. Use googlemail de-duplication features to tidy up the list.
5. Export the tidy list of googlemail contacts to a CSV file.
6. Switch on auto updates on the phone, then delete all contacts from the phone.
(this took ages as I kept "exceeding the maximum number of deletes") The auto update also deleted all the contacts in googlemail.
7. Once both the phone and googlemail were devoid of contacts...
8. Import the tidy CSV file back into googlemail.
9. Auto update then drags all the contacts down to the phone.
10. Enjoy hassle-free contact synchronisation!

Thanks very much to everyone for their contributions to this thread!

westkc3

Has anyone else tried this process? Seems that if it worked well we wouldn't see so many still posting about this issue.

NYVetteGuy

I use Gsyncit..is that what you are referring to?

This syncs all of my outlook contacts to google...works great!

Last edited by NYVetteGuy; 02-01-2010 at 09:06 PM.

kirko

My question is that I have had my gmail account since they werent free to everyone. I have around 400 email contacts that I would like to keep. I have my gmail contacts set up in 2 different contact folders; email contacts and phone contacts. Is there any way to just display the phone contacts when the hero is using gmail contacts only? Or am I stuck with seeing 400 email addresses in my contacts screen...

porthos7

why when I sync the hero with my google account contacts, the contacts "calendar" info does not show up i.e, birthdays, anniversaries, etc that are set per person?

Eigo_Ltd

There is a free application called "Merge Contact" that allows you to copy your phone number from a Phone contact to a Google contact on HTC Hero and maybe other phones running 1.5 or 1.6. You can download it from the Market or see details about it here : www.eigo.co.uk

It only copies one contact at a time but better than nothing...

Chief YYZ

I have the same problem, cannot create google contacts on the phone, simply no option, only phone is available. All contacts transferred over from old phone by Sprint store are google... Also can't choose which groups to sync (other threads have stated going thru: People --> Groups --> Menu will bring up 3 options, but I only get edit or delete, no sync.)
Anyone know why this is or any fixes?
Can do the workarounds, but seems really stupid to have to convert EVERY entry or go to my PC and use Gmail to add contacts to my phone...

MusicManJ5

Glad to know that I'm not the only one struggling with this issue... I've just been saving to phone contacts and been backing up my contacts list to make sure i don't lose anything... a majority of my contacts are on GMail but since I've purchased the phone, obviously, i haven't been able to sync up the new added contacts to Gmail unless I go back and input them in to GMail by hand on my Mac.

I'll give some of these options a try and report back.

tatonka_Hero

Use "export contacts" from the market. It should export all of your contacts to an excel file, which you can then import into gmail, and they will then sync back to your phone. It worked great for me!

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Covert_Death

well, here is how i did it... VERY easy... i bluetoothed all the contacts from my instinct to my computer, then logged into google.com and under contacts there is an import option and i uploaded them into that and was done!

Chief YYZ

OK, as advertised a factory reset will fix it (both the Google/Phone option and the sync groups option.) Not rooted, so a bit of a pain to redownload apps, reconfigure phone and such, oh well. Found a post on sprint forums that said clearing data from gmail and google apps will allow you to resign in to google and fix the problem. Doesn't work, you lose your link with Google and cannot go to the market or use maps and all your google contacts are unavailable. Trying to resign in will not work (unless rooted, then you can delete a data file or so I'm told), phone will not connect to Google servers, you have to factory reset to sign back in to Google at phone setup.

Chief YYZ

Someone who's rooted let us know if this works

read response #3 at

Hero by HTC:How to change or delete gmail account?

You will not be able to reconnect to Google after doing this, you will get error message "Can't establish a reliable data connection to the server" when entering sign in information, BUT

This claims if you are rooted you can fix it

Issue 3477 - android - HTC Hero - can't sign Gmail account if user skips signing when initially using the phone. - Project Hosting on Google Code

Post #16 has the answer, post #32 confirms it.

Again, not rooted, no Idea if this really works, try at your own risk.