How to Back Up Contacts

[McFizz]

So, I read all of this stuff about Google syncing my contacts to my google account, but when I go try and look at them online, they aren't there. The only thing that happened was gmail sent all of the email addresses i've ever sent an email to to my phone. That is something i dislike. I have tried backing up my contacts using Lookout too. Nothing there either. If Google is supposed to automatically sync with the contacts, why arent any of them there? Please help! thanks!

 

[HomelessDepot]

Hmm, strange. It sounds like something's not working right, syncing your gmail contacts should add everything to your web based gmail client. At least it does for me on my Droid Incredible.

Are you sure you're doing it correctly? Don't mean to be insulting, just trying to cover the basics -

Settings, Accounts and sync, Google, Sync contacts checkbox?

-HD

 

[McFizz]

Yea, and thats the only one i have checked. Doesnt make any sense.

 

[CptGemini]

My contacts get sycned but if your looking for a good app to backup all your data then look no further than mybackup pro. It is well worth the price to pay for it as you can set it to do daily backups, its how I have mine setup. I have mine set to do daily backups of all data at night when im least likely to be using the phone. I also have lookout mobile security, mainly have that for in case I loose my phone it helps me find it by going on to their site and making the phone scream or searching for it via gps.

 

[McFizz]

i really would prefer not to pay for something that google claims to do already. why is mine not working if everyone else's does?

 

[McFizz]

figured it out. you have to specifically save them to your google account for it to work. just in case anyone else has this issue as well.

 

[CptGemini]

It backs up a lot more than just contacts though. What this app does is basically restore your phone to the previous condition it was in as if you were to never loose it.

 

[Alexothy]

I had a problem like this, it only sync'd new contacts that were put in as Google contacts old ones that were converted to be Google contacts didn't sync. In accounts and sync against Google sync it said "probem with syncing will be back up soon" but it had been saying that a month and the calendar and mail synced ok. I read up on the problems people had changing e-mail address from Googlemail to Gmail and loosing sync and follwed the procedure at #10 (the ones before that advocate a hard reset which will wipe your phone but this one doesn't) http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/86696-switching-googlemail-gmail.html

So make sure all your contacts are stored as Google contacts (you can convert them at the end by exporting them in the next step as they are, deleting all your contacts on your phone follow the procedure in step 3 then check import as google contacts when you import them at the end).

Export them to your SD card from the people menu (It might lose them when it does start to sync)

Follow the procedure at #10 ( I cleared the cache on anything that looked contact/google account related)

Import from your SD card if they've gone.

This was for a HTC desire, might be worth seeing if there's a specific thread like this for your device.

Also just seen this which is specifically for not syncing to Google.

http://androidforums.com/android-applications/212735-failing-google-contacts-sync.html

 

[DenverRalphy]

It's much easier to just go to visit your gmail account from a desktop -> select Contacts -> clicky "Other Contacts" -> Select all the contacts you see there that you need (these are all the contacts sync'd from your phone but weren't specifically tagged to your google account) -> Clicky the Group dropdown menu -> select MyContacts. Sync your device. Done.