Your problem is not with Google. It is how you have entered contacts or in the settings of your contacts app. Typically, it is something like this:
On most phones contacts can be stored in 3 places.
1. As Google contacts. These are stored on the phone and synced to your Google account (unless sync is turned off).
2. As Phone contacts. These are stored locally on the phone only and not synced.
3. As SIM contacts. Unlike 1+2 above, only names and one number per name can be stored. No addresses, email info, photos, etc.
Your contacts app can be set to display any or all of the above. If you see duplicates then you have those contacts saved in more than one place, for example as both 1+2, and your contacts app is set to display 1+2. So, you see duplicates. Changing the contacts app to display either 1 or 2 but not both eliminates the duplicate contact display.
See your phone manual for more details.
Also, you may have contacts that are joined and must be separated to sort things out.
Under "Contacts to display" there are 7 options:
- "All contacts" This is what it was set too.
- "Device"
- My personal Gmail account.
- My work Gmail account.
- Facebook
- My personal Yahoo Mail account
- "Customized list"
When I change it to "Customized list" and only select one Gmail account, such as my work account, I still show multiple(2-3) listings for many of my contacts. I also show contacts that are friends or family and have nothing to do with my job. When I go into settings for "Customized list" and select only my personal Gmail account it still shows multiple listings for many contacts as well as showing many of my contacts that should only be associated with my work Gmail account. These contacts as somehow migrating from one account to the other. Earlier this year it was recommended to me that I merge my duplicate contacts in order to only show one listing per contact. This worked for a lot of my contacts at first but did not stop them from duplicating again sometime later. In regards to my Google contacts as viewed on a PC, most of the contacts I merged that then went from multiple listings to just one, most are still just showing one listing but others are once again showing multiple listings. The number of listings for unique contacts isn't the same between my phone contacts and contacts within my Gmail accounts. As an example, one work vendor contact I just looked up on my PC shows 2 listings, while on my phone there are 5. The 2 listings in my Gmail on the PC show different info. One shows a name, address, and cell# while the other just shows a name, cell#, and group association. Of the 5 listings on my phone, 2 are identical with a name, cell#, and group association while the other 3 are nearly identical as they all show name, cell#, email, address, and contact photo. The only difference between them is the group associations are different. One of them is associated with the "family" group even though they are a work vendor.
I do not know what the difference is between "phone contacts" and "SIM contacts" although they sound like they should be the same thing.
Since I created my personal Gmail account, about 3 years ago, I have assigned ALL the contacts I created on my phones to either my work or personal Gmail accounts rather than allowing them to be assigned as phone contacts. Some of my other contacts were created within my Gmail account on one PC or another. I always assumed these were being automatically associated with the Gmail account I was logged into at the time I created the contact and only that account but that is clearly not the case. I would like to be able to somehow edit each contact to only be associated with one Gmail account or the other but I do not know how to accomplish this as it doesn't give me an option to do this on either my phone contacts or within Gmail on a PC.
As if the issues I've already outlined aren't enough there is more. Within my work Gmail contacts I have all our managers in a group for the purpose of sending daily group emails. Whenever I go to compose an email and click on "To", then "My contacts" to choose the group I have all our managers in I get multiple listings for almost all of them. I should be able to check the "Select All" box and move onto composing my email but instead I individually check a box for each individual manager. The way it's supposed to work for this is that you go into an individual contact and click on the group you have/want them in and then choose which of their email address, if they have more than one, associated with that group. Then when you choose that group when composing an email only that email address should be listed for that particular contact. I have gone in, multiple times, and confirmed that only one email address is checked for each contact but all the contacts email addresses come up for the group they are associated with. It makes no sense why this is the case. I have gone into a contact and deleted all but one email address associated with that contact, then confirmed it's gone by logging out of Gmail and logging back in only to later find the email address i deleted added back to the contact. I can not figure out how or why Google would add email address to a contact on it's own. No other email service I've had has ever done that. As of 4 days ago I just had a new wrinkle happen around the sometime I had my phone replaced. Now my groups in both my personal & work Gmail accounts have been duplicated and in one case quadrupled. This has never happened before, even when changing phones. It's seems pretty obvious to me that some, if not all, of these issues are related to some kind of syncing issue but in what way?? If I can't figure out how these things are happening then how can I fix it and stop it from occurring again?!
It seems pretty ridiculous to me that Google can do all this migrating, duplicating, adding of email address, and changing of account associations of contacts but they won't allow customers such as myself to undo alot of these changes or stop them from occurring in the future.
I know you don't believe these are Google issues but I honestly don't see how they aren't.
The most frustrating thing about all of this to me is that I have little doubt that someone from Google could figure this out pretty quickly and resolve it without much issue but they do not support people like me who have been using their products for years.
