Taming Your Android Contacts

Overwhelmed and confused by managing contacts on your Android phone? You're not alone.

Like most people, you've probably spent the last 15 years accumulating contacts on your cell phone. Meanwhile, you've also been building contact lists in your various email accounts. Imported together on your smart phone or tablet, you've got a colossal mess. Which of  the three home numbers you have for your buddy is correct? Why does he show up in your address book multiple times? And when he gives you his new contact info, which contact source (or sources) should you update?

Time to simplify! Consolidate your contact lists and merge those old "phone" contacts into a master list. Contacts are contacts and the fewer lists to maintain the better. In the age of smartphones, we finally have full-featured contact functionality to keep ALL your contact's info in one place.

I'll walk you through step-by-step instructions to conquer your contacts. You'll have to spend a bit of time for general cleanup and standardization - more or less time depending on how may contacts you have - but the mechanics of moving and "de-duping" contacts are easy. In less than an hour, you can have all your contacts consolidated. You can then chip away at cleanup (e.g., standardizing names to easily eliminate duplicates).



DUCT TAPE WILL ONLY GET YOU SO FAR

So, why not just use an app for that? There is a promising new breed of apps, such as Smartr and CircleBack, to help us better manage contacts. They'll give you a consolidated view of your contacts and even fill in some missing information from popular social media sites. It's a valuable service, but pretty much like electronic duct tape as far as fixing the real issue. The contact information that you maintain should not be fragmented. If you want to rely on other sources for some of your contact's information, that's fine, but you first need to consolidate and delete old info.


A BETTER STRATEGY FOR CONTACTS

You'll see in the graphic below how my phone was set up prior to simplifying everything. It wasn't pretty, but it was somewhat typical. I used to sync my phone with the contacts in each of my separate email accounts.  I also had imported my Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts, thinking (mistakenly) it would be nice to have them listed in my phone contacts as well. Instead, adding a few hundred contacts just made it that much  harder to find anyone in particular.

And here is the new strategy that gave me my sanity back...

• I consolidated everything into two master lists - one for personal contacts, the other for work contacts. I use my Google/Gmail for personal contacts and have a Microsoft Exchange account for work, but the type of account you use doesn't matter. Other types of accounts like (e.g., Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL) can also serve as your master list.
• All of my previous "phone" contacts are now merged into my new master personal contact list. They no longer exist separately on my phone... sounds trivial, but this is huge.
• I periodically export copies of my master personal contact list to my other personal email accounts to make them available there, too. To avoid any confusion, I only update the master list, though.
• I sync my Facebook and LinkedIn contacts with *existing* work and personal contacts to get contact photos and some other missing information I may not have in the master lists. This is just a simple setting in these respective Android apps (more details below).

The steps below are divided into three phases:

• Consolidation
• Phone settings
• Cleanup/organization

In consolidation, you'll merge all your contacts into your master list, delete your old phone settings and import the master list (if needed) to other email accounts. Next, you'll update your phone's sync settings to sync only with your master list, along with Facebook and/or LinkedIn if you wish. There's no harm in stopping after you update your phone settings and working through cleanup/organization (which includes removing duplicates and assigning groups) as you have time. I'd give yourself an hour to complete consolidation and phone settings. The amount of time you'll need for cleanup and organization will depend on how many contacts you have and how much research you do to verify that the information is current.

Terminology alert! 
Don't confuse syncing, joining and merging.

• Syncing replicates contacts on two or more sources. Changes to contacts are also replicated via syncing.
• If you have multiple contact records for the same person (perhaps from your work and personal contacts lists) they can be "joined" to appear in your address book as a single contact. The information in the original sources is not changed.  
• Finally, I refer to merging contacts when combining two or more into a single, combined contact record. Here, you are essentially moving information from one contact (to be later deleted) to the master contact record.

CONSOLIDATION

Export your phone contacts
If your old phone contacts were moved directly to Google when you got your Android phone, then you can skip this step. However, if you have a stand-alone contact list on your phone (not tied to an email account or social media), you'll want to export these so they can be consolidated into your master list. There are three methods to do this:

METHOD 1: If you're a Verizon Wireless customer, you can use Backup Assistant to save a copy of your contacts to the Verizon server. You can then log onto your account and export them to a file that can be imported to your master contact list. I'll refer you to Verizon's instructions on setting up this backup feature. If/when your contacts are backed up with Backup Assistant, here are the basic steps to export them to your computer:

1. From your computer, log into Verizon Backup Assistant (via your VZW account)
2. Choose the contacts to export (or click the "Select All" link)
3. In the actions menu, choose Export Contact
4. Choose the option "Export my contacts to an email service, such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc."
5. Save the file to your computer. (This will be a .csv file which you can also view in Excel. It will be later imported to the master list and also serves as a backup copy.)

METHOD 2: Export contacts directly from your Android phone. To do this, go to the contacts app and choose the Import/Export menu option. Note the location where the file will be saved on your SD card and name of the file (e.g., "/sdcard/external_sd/00001.vcf"). Use a file management app like File Manager or Astro to navigate to the directory and send it to yourself. Typically, you can "long press" the file to get the option to send/share it via email.

 

METHOD 3: There are several backup apps on Android Market that save and export contacts. Many, however, require "root" access to your phone (another topic in itself). If you have such an app, you might consider using it instead of the above methods. Be sure to read other user feedback before trying these apps, as some have been known to do more harm than good. It's also smart to make a backup of your contacts before using these apps.

Pull your contacts into your master list
The email big boys like Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL purposely make it easy to import contacts from one another (i.e., making it easier for you to switch to them). In Gmail contacts, you will find the import contact option under the "More" menu within contacts. Yahoo! has a link to import contacts on the default contact page. Hotmail has a link to "add people."

You can also import contacts from a file, typically a CSV (generic text file with comma-separated values), so you can pull in the contacts that you have previously exported from your phone. Similarly, you can import contacts from Microsoft Outlook and other sources via CSV files.

Decide which account will be used for your master list and import contacts from your various other sources. If you use Gmail, all imported contacts will automatically be given a label with the import date. This give you a safety net should you want or need to delete that group of contacts later.

Import your master list to other accounts
Import your fresh master list into each of your "non-master" email accounts whose contacts were included in the big merge. Delete the existing contacts first, then find the option to import contacts from another source (like you did earlier).

Delete your old phone contacts
Once you've confirmed that your old phone contacts have been imported successfully, you're ready to delete them from your phone. Here are two possible approaches:

METHOD 1: If your phone contacts are synced via Verizon Backup Assistant, I strongly recommend deleting them online and syncing to your phone. It's quick and easy - basically just selecting all contacts and choosing delete.

METHOD 2: The other approach is to delete the contacts directly on your phone, but unfortunately this must be done one at a time.

CAUTION: The same contact from multiple sources may be "joined" to display as a single, consolidated contact. Joining is often done automatically by Android. If a contact is joined, you'll be prompted which source (e.g., phone or Google) should be deleted. An easy way to avoid the confusion and repeated extra steps here is to filter the display of your contacts to view only "phone" contacts.

1. Choose "Display options" from the menu within your phone's contacts
2. Scroll down to the "Contacts to Display" section. In Android 2.3.x, this is under More/Display Options menu. In Android 4.x, "Contacts to display" is a menu option.
3. ONLY the contacts for "Phone" should be checked to display (including ALL sub-categories such as family, friends, work, and "all other contacts").
4. Go back to your contact list and confirm that only the phone contacts are displayed. "Long press" each contact to see the option to delete.

 

 

By the way, don't worry about deleting these. Your previous phone contacts have already been integrated into your master list and you still have your original export file.


PHONE SETTINGS

Un-sync non-master contact lists
Go to Accounts and Sync in your phone's settings. Select each account to see if its contacts are synced, unchecking the boxes to sync any contacts that are not your "master" list(s). You'll click on each source to see this option. You can also uncheck Facebook and LinkedIn. We'll come back to those shortly.

If you are a Verizon Wireless customer and you've already deleted your old phone contacts, you should uncheck the box to auto-sync with Backup Assistant. (If you are prompted to log into Backup Assistant, then this service isn't active and there's no need to change auto-sync settings.)

Facebook & LinkedIn Settings
You have two options for viewing your Facebook and LinkedIn contacts. One option is to sync and view ALL of your Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts. So, if you had 200 unique contacts in your master list, and another 300 unique contacts in Facebook and/or LinkedIn, you'd now have a list of 500 contacts displayed on your phone. In other words, you will now have a bunch of old classmates and work acquaintances - most of whom are not on your master list - now shown as contacts on your phone. This may be great for some people, but I'd rather to look up these other contacts directly in Facebook and LinkedIn if needed.

My preferred other option is to show only Facebook and LinkedIn information for "existing" contacts (i.e., those in your master list). Using the example above, only your original 200 master list contacts will be displayed, but you'll also be able to view Facebook and LinkedIn information for the 200 contacts. Specifically, the profile pictures, email addresses and phone numbers on Facebook and LinkedIn will be joined with your contacts.

Facebook allows you to change your settings for syncing contacts from within its app. Go to Sync Contacts (under Other Settings) and you'll see options to sync all, sync with existing contacts or even remove all Facebook data. Behind the scenes, Facebook will make the appropriate changes to your phone's settings in Accounts & Sync.

For LinkedIn, however, you'll need to update your phone's settings directly. Choose Accounts & Sync in your phone's settings menu and select the LinkedIn account. There you will see options to Sync Contacts or Sync LinkedIn data only (with your existing contacts).

 

CLEANUP/ORGANIZATION

Remove duplicates and list cleanup
Cleanup is best done directly online with your computer. Look for the option to find and remove duplicates for the service you use. I found that the Google option worked quite well, but the contacts must have the same first and last name (it will not merge based on phone number or email address alone). Despite this limitation, it's still a huge time-saver.

Go through your contacts, manually deleting any information you know is out-of-date, and changing the name of "duplicates" so that the first and last names match. Re-run the de-dupe utility periodically as your work through the cleanup. The resulting updates will be automatically synced to your phone. Hooray!

Assign contact groups
While not essential, having your contacts in groups can be helpful in managing them. Groups can be used as distribution lists or just for finding contacts more quickly. Through display options on your phone, you can even choose which groups to display. You can assign groups online or through your phone and they'll sync with each other.

Choose contacts to display on your phone
Android provides the ability to display or hide contacts by account (Yahoo!, Facebook...) and by groups within each source (Friends, Family...). In your now-simplified world, there should be no need to hide an entire contact account, but you may want further limit who you see on your phone by including or excluding certain contact groups. To change your display settings, choose Display Options from the menu in Contacts on your phone.

"Join" contacts that are displayed more than once
Android allows you to join related contacts for display purposes. (Joining does NOT merge all the data into a single contact.) For example, you might have a friend on your personal contact list that is also a coworker included in your work master list. It's the same person, so ideally they don't show up twice on your phone.

In most cases, this is done automatically by Android when the names match. I'm not sure what the exact logic is, but Android does not seem to compare actual numbers and email addresses. Joining contacts is done by editing one contact and choosing the option to join with others. You'll be prompted to select the the other contacts you wish to join.


And there you have it. This may seem like a lot of effort, but it's easier than it sounds and quite manageable from a time-perspective. You'll be thanking yourself that this aspect of your electronic life is now in order.

Go forth and simplify!