Help Double and Triple Contacts

[Scottyent]

Hello all, I know this has been talked about, I just can't find the thread (so many contact issue threads) So I'm sorry if this is redundant.

When I'm texting, I get three versions of each person...all the same number, so I just choose one and text away. Not problem, assumed it was a glitch.

However, I just noticed I had a wrong contact phone number, I went to go edit it...and I changed the number. But then saw it kept the old number under his name too. Thinking this was weird, I went back in and edit...then scrolled down. There were three "Google Contact" versions of his card, all with the same info. I had to delete the old number out of all of them for it to go away. Then, I added a new contact to check that it synced up with Gmail ok, and it synced up when I first added it. Then I changed the number from home to mobile, and then added her company name, and it added her AGAIN on gmail for some reason. Double and tripling all sorts of contacts, how come!?

 

[galt]

My first guess would be some issue between gmail and your droid. What I would do is:

1. Go thru and clean up any duplicates in Google Mail. MERGE them if you have dups
2. Back up this cleaned up file to any kind of file google allows, maybe a CSV.
3. Turn off sync on the droid. Maybe even disconnect from your google acct completely.
4. Delete all contacts from the droid. If there is a file-lvel delete, do that.
5. Turn on sync and let google mail rebuild your droid file.

Of course, this could blow up depending on how they implemented sync, and delete your google mail contacts instead. That is why you want step #2. Just re-import and start again. And I would look into the details a bit more or experiment before I actaully did this, but this is the general approach I would use.

 

[Tim K]

yes, there is an issue with syncing merged contacts from gmail. I merged some contacts in gmail and when they synced to my phone everything seemed normal....in the phone and on gmail....until I went to edit the contacts on the phone and found some had 4 google account contacts. What you have to do is a pain, but it works. Find all your contacts on the phone with multiple google contacts (by editing). Pick one of the sub-contacts and make sure it contains all the correct info. Delete everything in each of the other sub contacts. Once you do that, save the contact. Then go back in to edit it and from the menu choose separate. This will pull out the blank contacts. In some cases the phone will delete the blanks. In others you will find "unknown contacts" at the top of your list. They can just be deleted.

It takes a while and sucks, but it works.

 

[Scottyent]

Hmm alright, I hope that that last post isn't the ONLY way. What I'm gonna try is redoing Gmail contacts and erasing the doubles, and resyncing with a blank contact list for my phone as recommended above. If it is in fact just google syncing thats having the issue, I guess I'll due what Tim said, which kind of sucks but whatever. I think part of my issue is that I have apple address book syncing with Google. I've had issues with this from the beginning as the fields are changed and moved around or randomly last names are doubled etc. So, I finally stopped syncing address book, and I'll just go all google!

fingers crossed

 

[Tim K]

The lesson I learned is don't let gmail merge contacts....because its not a true merge as it clearly keeps some sort of hidden separation which causes this bug...otherwise how would "separate" even be an option?

 

[az_r2d1]

double contacts in gmail contacts.. ugh. Every single one.

 

[BamaBlue]

My problem is similar, but instead of gmail duplicates, mine shows 3 Facebook entries for my contacts that are also FB friends...and it's telling me I am not "allowed" to edit FB info!

Any ideas on how to fix that problem?

 

[halfmonkey]

I'm experiencing this problem and I'll add something to the mix. I believe what might be the problem, but I'm not sure, is the fact that when you hit the back button, any changes you might have made are saved to the phone while if you hit the done button, the changes are saved to the memory card. I've noticed that if I then sync by importing the contact list to the memory card or vice vesa, that's when I'll get dups and trips of each contact.

Anybody have any thoughts on this or noticed this or experienced this as well?

 

[az_r2d1]

I'm experiencing this problem and I'll add something to the mix. I believe what might be the problem, but I'm not sure, is the fact that when you hit the back button, any changes you might have made are saved to the phone while if you hit the done button, the changes are saved to the memory card. I've noticed that if I then sync by importing the contact list to the memory card or vice vesa, that's when I'll get dups and trips of each contact.

Anybody have any thoughts on this or noticed this or experienced this as well?

Well, I guess google realized something is wrong too,they added a duplicate checker/resolver to gmail contact. Check it out.