Anyone understand Android Contacts?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

A minor annoyance, to be sure, but things don’t work exactly perfect in my setup, and it bugs me. I can’t imagine my config is totally out to lunch, so I should be able to have things work just so. Any searches I’ve done on this topic seem to return workarounds from 2012, and things don’t work that way anymore.

I am rocking an Essential PH-1 (stock Android 7.1.1 – great handset, BTW). I have disabled Gmail, and I use the Android Outlook app to manage my various email accounts and calendar. This allows me to sync email/calendar with my various devices across multiple accounts. It works.

Things get a little funky with Contacts. It seems as if the native SMS app (Messages) pulls from Google Contacts. If I log in to Google Contacts from my desktop and Import from Outlook.com, I get duplicates of virtually every contact. So right now, I have a number of people who live in both Outlook and Google, and some who live in one and not the other. It’s not ideal.

What I want is a synced/unified Contacts database. I don’t care if it’s “owned” by my Google or Microsoft account, I would just like it to work. Any suggestions?

2

Outlook is likely confusing things. I’ve an Essential, use contacts solely via Gmail, and have no issues.

3

I assume you have a MS (outlook.com) email? So you don’t really want to use Gmail for your contacts, you want to use Outlook.com to store your contacts. The Outlook app is mostly sandboxed, and doesn’t, by default, sync your contacts to the phone for use in other apps, ie SMS. However if you go into settings in the Outlook app, then into the specific email account, and tap the sync contacts button, it will sync them to the phone.

outlook_android
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I’d disable contact sync on your Gmail account in the phone settings, then flip on the Outlook app contact sync.

Of course, what I’d really do is use Gmail for everything and ditch the Outlook.com account, but if you want the Outlook life…

4

Thanks, @mono. It looks like that Sync Contacts toggle was set to “off.” I’ve switched it over now, so we’ll see how that works.

I really do want to keep using Outlook rather than Gmail. The biggest issue was just having all my contacts available for use particularly in the native Messages app. This fix might do the trick!

5

Well, it didn’t quite work… lots of duplicates.

6

Thunderbird on my PC keeps duplicating my contacts. I have three copies of some contacts. It’s annoying.

7

You should DISABLE the google contact sync on your gmail account, firstly.

Then go into your Outlook account via the web and make sure you don’t have duplicates all up in there already. Clean it up, as needed.

If your only contacts on the phone are being synced from your Outlook.com account, there shouldn’t be any dupes, unless you already have dupes in that account.