Help No way to delete a single phone call entry

[cwr64]

Running Android 8 on Moto e5 Play. I bring up my phone call log where I see tons of calls I have received. I run the regular phone app that came on the phone. I want to delete at least one of those call entries and do not want to remove all the entries in the log. I can find no way to delete a single call entry. On my son's Android (10?) and his wife's Android (7?) there is a "delete" option to delete a single entry, but on my phone the "delete" is missing from the list of options I can pick from the drop-down menu. My drop-down menu contains one less option than what is on my son's drop-down, and the missing option is "delete". Both my son and I also run Hiya app but that app does not give us the option to delete a single phone log entry. Using ATT service, btw.
What to do?

 

[Hadron]

It sounds like Moto are using a dialer app that lacks this option - I had that option in Android 8, so it's definitely a change by Moto or your carrier rather than the Android version. So I'd try installing an alternative dialer app.

Of course you are giving these apps access to personal information (contacts and call logs), so you need to trust the app developer. I've never bothered with alternative dialers, so am not familiar with most of these and hence can't recommend one from personal use. So my suggestion is Simple Dialer, as that's an open-source app from a well-known developer - I've used some of their other apps, so have more trust in them than in developers I don't know. That's the Play Store link, but it's also available through the F-Droid store. That app certainly has the option to delete individual call log entries (I installed it just now to test) so should do what you want.

If it doesn't then Moto have changed something deeper in the system rather than just in the dialer app, in which case your options are probably live with the full list or delete the lot. Or if you are more confident the other option would be to find an app that backs up call logs - most SMS backup apps do - and does so into a text-based form like XML. Then you could make a copy of the backup, edit the copy to remove the entries you don't want, clear the log on your phone then restore the edited version of the backup. Much more of a hassle, and not something everyone would be comfortable with, so I mention it only as a fallback if nothing else works.

 

[cwr64]

I thought the "delete" I want to do would be such a simple, basic part of the dialer app that came on the Android 8 phone that it was something I was overlooking but from your reply it looks like - not. My son's and his wife's phones (Android 10 and 7) both offer the "delete" option (though in slightly different screens) but neither of them are using the Moto 5e Play phone. If I download/install the Simple Dialer does that automatically replace the original dialer that came on the phone or do I have to do something additional to implement the new app. If the new app fails to fix my problem, how do I get back to where I am now? As you can tell - I'm not very smartphone smart.
p.s. When I tried to research this on Google, posts kept telling me to go to the phone's "recent" screen/tab but I never did find any such screen or tab in my phone app.
All I could find were tabs called "ALL" and "MISSED" in the call History.

 

[Hadron]

Some dialer apps call the call log "Recents", so that's probably what was meant by the search results.

No, an alternative dialer does not automatically replace the stock one. You can choose one as the default but still use the other. Hence it's possible to install an alternative just for this purpose and continue to use the stock one if you like. In fact all that changing the "default" will do is change which app is used if you click on a link to a phone number.

If the new app doesn't fix it, just uninstall it.

 

[svim]

Regarding the default dialer, if you tap once on that number you want to delete, is there a 'Call details' shown? If you tap on that is does a Trash can icon show in the resulting window?

 

[cwr64]

@svim - YES And it worked!!!