iPhone Contacts

[jlwilson]

Is there an easy way to clean up my contacts actually on my phone without going through each one? I have my phone set to grab my contacts from gmail and would like to be able to push the contacts that I have entered on my phone to my computer. Can this be done or do I just have to take the time to clean them all up on the phone?

Thanks!

 

[Bob Noel]

what do you mean by "clean up?

Do you sync your iphone with your computer?

Wouldn't it be easier to do the editing on the computer?

 

[jlwilson]

Exactly. I do sync with my computer. And I have edited all my contacts in gmail. As an example, I had 2 entries for Bill, one had his cell phone and one had his work phone. I edited gmail so that all the information is in one contact. However on my phone I still have 3 entries for him and the third contains his address. I don't want to do all the editing on my phone, but I don't know if I can push all the information on my phone to my computer to edit it. I just use gmail now instead of outlook so that I can pick up my email from anywhere. The phone lists groups as all contacts, from my pc and my gmail account. I'm just not sure how to get all the information the same on my computer and my phone.

Thanks for the help!

 

[SCCutler]

Good luck with all that; Apple apparently makes it difficult for third parties to access the contact list for programmers.

 

[jlwilson]

That's what I was afraid of, sigh... :-(

 

[Rob Schaffer]

I had a similar problem when I first got mine. Old phone had "Buddy's Home" and "Buddy's Cell" separately. I used the copy/paste feature of the iPhone to get the info from one to another, and then deleted the old one.

probably is an easier way, but I didn't find it in the apple help menus or online.

 

[SkyHog]

If your iPhone will grab the contacts from Gmail, and you have your gmail set up correctly, you could delete all of your contacts from the iPhone, and then resync with Gmail to get the correct ones.

Provided I'm reading your original post correctly.

 

[Bob Noel]

Exactly. I do sync with my computer. And I have edited all my contacts in gmail. As an example, I had 2 entries for Bill, one had his cell phone and one had his work phone. I edited gmail so that all the information is in one contact. However on my phone I still have 3 entries for him and the third contains his address. I don't want to do all the editing on my phone, but I don't know if I can push all the information on my phone to my computer to edit it. I just use gmail now instead of outlook so that I can pick up my email from anywhere. The phone lists groups as all contacts, from my pc and my gmail account. I'm just not sure how to get all the information the same on my computer and my phone.

Thanks for the help!

ok, I don't use windows with my ipod (which, I believe, is the same
wrt contacts as the iphone). My copy of itunes allows me to overwrite the ipod contacts with the contacts on my computer. Does your sync program have that as an advanced option?

 

[alaskaflyer]

This is for iTunes v. 8.2 running on Windoze:

• Connect your phone via USB
• Select your phone in iTunes menu
• Go to "Info" tab
• Select "Sync contacts with <whatever - Gmail in your case>"
• Configure as needed
• Scroll to bottom of same screen (Info) to "Advanced" section
• Select "Replace information on this iPhone - Contacts"
• DO NOT SYNC YET

• In iTunes, go to Edit>Preferences>Devices
• Press the "REset Sync History" button
• OK
• Sync your iPhone
• Follow instructions on how/if you want to merge information
• voila

 

[jlwilson]

Thanks! I'm running 9.0 but it should do the same thing. I mainly sync on my computer at home so I'll try it there. The new 9.0 software says that you can sync up to 5 computers, but it doesn't really seem to carry the data back and forth like I thought it would.

I guess I'll just have to take the contacts that I have added straight to my phone and manually add them into my gmail contacts. I still don't see a way to push the data from my phone to my computer.

 

[alaskaflyer]

Thanks! I'm running 9.0 but it should do the same thing. I mainly sync on my computer at home so I'll try it there. The new 9.0 software says that you can sync up to 5 computers, but it doesn't really seem to carry the data back and forth like I thought it would.

I guess I'll just have to take the contacts that I have added straight to my phone and manually add them into my gmail contacts. I still don't see a way to push the data from my phone to my computer.

I *think* that when you do the next-to-last step in my post (sync after making the configuration changes) iTunes will give you the opportunity to move iPhone contacts to Gmail as one of the merge options. I haven't tried that myself.

I guess I should have asked this question originally: are you normally syncing your contacts using iTunes, or using the wireless Exchange protocol ("ActiveSync") functionality provided by Gmail and the iPhone? You keep using the word "push" so I assume so.

If so...once you have things set up through iTunes once, you should be able to maintain it through the Activesync protocol bidirectionally without syncing through iTunes again.

WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT I neglected to post above: after you get things cleaned up you need to go back into your "Info" tab for the iPhone device in iTunes and disable syncing again, if you want to sync wirelessly going forward.

 

[Doggtyred]

I previously HAD my 3G-S synced up with my google contacts (independent of my home puter). Every time I had a new upgrade to the firmware.. I ended up with duplicates on my contacts. If I deleted one.. I lost them both on the next sync with the computer.

The solution was to undo the sync with google contacts. I still have the calendar synced, but thats it.

I have manually, slowly, updated my contact list and will not do that again. If the phone dies, it will recover it from the computer sync/restore.

I'm not going to pay for a program/app to do all this.

 

[alaskaflyer]

I previously HAD my 3G-S synced up with my google contacts (independent of my home puter). Every time I had a new upgrade to the firmware.. I ended up with duplicates on my contacts. If I deleted one.. I lost them both on the next sync with the computer.

The solution was to undo the sync with google contacts. I still have the calendar synced, but thats it.

I have manually, slowly, updated my contact list and will not do that again. If the phone dies, it will recover it from the computer sync/restore.

I'm not going to pay for a program/app to do all this.

I believe the problem is that with an update in the firmware and the automatic sync afterwards the prior sync history is loaded back on your phone and then Activesync creates a new replica from Google - now you have two. Whether this is intentional or a conflict between Google and iTunes is unknown to me. Using the steps I outlined in my first post above (clearing your sync history then replacing your contacts) seems to cure the problem...without expending any additional funds At least it did for me.

 

[jlwilson]

Thanks for all your help! I think I actually have my contacts cleaned up now. I didn't realize until I really started working with calendars and contacts that there are several folders that the information is stored in. As long as I keep my settings to 'all on my pc' it appears that I can send info back and forth from my iphone to my pc. I can see all my pc information on 'all calendars or all contacts' as well, but then I get double entries. I used to think I understood a little of this technology stuff, but I guess I'm just getting old.

Thanks again!

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Good luck with all that; Apple apparently makes it difficult for third parties to access the contact list for programmers.

Not true whatsoever. I think the developer of a certain program you use is using that as an excuse for why their iPhone support s*cks.

In fact, the "Obama 2008" app that I downloaded last year (to see what the heck it was!) used the built-in contacts in an interesting way: They organized all your contacts by state so you could "call a friend!" and it would automatically put the ones in the most-needed states at the top. Very creative.

I got a 3GS a couple weeks ago, and I noticed it has duplicates of all my contacts. I'm running iPhone OS 3.0 and iTunes 8.x still - Anyone have a quick solution for killing the dupes? Not sure what caused it in the first place - Maybe restoring from backup *and* syncing?

 

[alaskaflyer]

I got a 3GS a couple weeks ago, and I noticed it has duplicates of all my contacts. I'm running iPhone OS 3.0 and iTunes 8.x still - Anyone have a quick solution for killing the dupes? Not sure what caused it in the first place - Maybe restoring from backup *and* syncing?

Did you try my steps above?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Did you try my steps above?

This is for iTunes v. 8.2 running on Windoze:

Well, I'm on a Mac, but I gave it a try...

[*]Connect your phone via USB
[*]Select your phone in iTunes menu
[*]Go to "Info" tab
[*]Select "Sync contacts with <whatever - Gmail in your case>"
[*]Configure as needed
[*]Scroll to bottom of same screen (Info) to "Advanced" section
[*]Select "Replace information on this iPhone - Contacts"

So far so good...

[*]In iTunes, go to Edit>Preferences>Devices
[*]Press the "REset Sync History" button

Hmmm. I don't have that in my preferences.

[*]Sync your iPhone
[*]Follow instructions on how/if you want to merge information

Looking at it a bit more, I discovered that the contacts on my computer were out of date. However, my MobileMe account is up to date... Hmmm.

So, I set up my computer to sync contacts with MobileMe, and told iTunes to replace all my contacts on the iPhone at the next sync and synced. No dice. Well, OK, I now have two of EVERY contact, not just the ones I didn't enter on my iPhone.

So I figured maybe it can't tell the difference between MobileMe and my computer so it's grabbing one set from each - So I turned off contact sync with my computer. Still no dice, and it won't let me "replace" any more with that turned off.

But, now I got it to work: I created a new group in Address Book on my computer called "Empty." I set iTunes to sync only that group with the computer, and it blew away all the duplicates.

Oh Mr. Jooooooooobs...