Too many duplicate contacts!
A few months into my Android
experience I’ve been saying yes each time apps (Facebook, mail apps etc) offer
to sync my contacts. Thinking it would keep things straight, I thought it was a
great idea but, of course, in reality what it’s done has created many copies of
each contact so that I now show roughly 2,000 contacts when, in fact, I
probably have just under 300! Is there a method short of resetting the phone
and starting over again to just have Google Mail manage my contacts?
The problem you are experiencing is not
unusual and there are many ways to solve it. However, when you are using
multiple services that use contact integration, you will potentially come
across this problem many times. One option, which is admittedly manual, is to
tap the link icon when in a contact and to then select the option to join it to
another contact. It will solve the problem, but will need to be done manually
for each duplicated contact. A better option would be to head on over to Google
Play and search for ‘Contact Remover Plus’. This app can be used over and over
again and will let you copy, move and delete contacts in batches, which is a
good compromise between having the control you need and the automation to speed
up the process.
Get the app
You
can now tap each check box and delete them in bulk.
We mentioned Contact Remover Plus in the
answer to the related question, and to start removing duplicate contacts in
bulk, all you need to do is download the app in Google Play and let the app
populate all of your contacts. You can now tap each check box and delete them
in bulk.
Check your accounts
The
next part you should check is which accounts you have set up on your Android
device.
The next part you should check is which
accounts you have set up on your Android device. Go to Settings>Accounts and
then see how many accounts are listed. It is likely that with multiple accounts,
including Facebook and Mail, you will run into duplication problems for your
contacts.
Lose the sync
Decide
which account you want to use as your default contact list and then tap one of
the others.
Decide which account you want to use as
your default contact list and then tap one of the others. Here you should be
able to turn off the sync feature, which will stop contacts duplicating over
multiple accounts. Repeat this process for each account which is not your
default.
Automatic links
This
lets you prevent duplicates before they are created.
In the contacts app, also known as
‘People’, tap the menu icon and then select Settings. Here you should see a
‘Suggest contact link’ option, which should alert you to similar contacts that
you can merge if a second one is added. This lets you prevent duplicates before
they are created.
De-duplicate contacts
There
is also a setting in the contacts app called ‘De-duplicate contacts’ that can
be used to sweep your entire database and remove any that are exactly the same
for every attribute.
There is also a setting in the contacts app
called ‘De-duplicate contacts’ that can be used to sweep your entire database
and remove any that are exactly the same for every attribute. It is a one-tap
process and works well, but is not suitable for contacts that are not 100 per
cent identical.
Don’t waste time
Contacts
will build up over time through multiple accounts
Contacts will build up over time through
multiple accounts and although some housekeeping is required, you shouldn’t
spend too long dealing with duplicates. Ultimately, they are unlikely to get in
the way, so there is rarely a need to continually manage them on a regular
basis.
5 top tip for Android Automation
Profiles
can be activated based on many different factors
One touch profiles
Apps like Profile Manager let you create
your own profiles based on your particular needs. The automation is low on most
of these solutions, but they do offer the ability to tap once to activate a
profile, and some offer timed profiling, which can be set to come on
automatically.
Use your location
Some apps will let you change the state of
your phone based on the location. The phone will use the GPS antenna to
determine where you are and will then activate it accordingly. This can be
useful for silencing your phone before a meeting or when travelling to the
office.
NFC tags
If your phone is equipped with an NFC chip
you will be able to control the device using special tags. They are cheap to
purchase and can be placed in set locations to activate a particular state. For
example, you could have one in the car, the bedroom or anywhere else and the
profiles will activate when near to them.
Take it further
Some solutions, including the excellent
Tasker, let you activate specific tasks based on events which can save you lots
of time every day. Almost every eventuality is covered and you may be surprised
at what can be done.
The simple stuff
Don’t forget the simple profile management
and automation that is included in Android by default. For example, you can set
the brightness depending on your lighting conditions and also set apps to
update automatically.
Flash & Java
I recently bought a Samsung Tablet 2
10.1 3G for the sole purpose of using it to buy from live online car auctions.
The auction company uses Java and after visiting a PC World store, they were
able to install Java for Android. This didn’t work and I contacted the auction
company again - they said I also needed Flash Player which I managed to find
via a Google search. However I still can’t access the live online auction
sites.
This is a tricky situation for us to solve
because we do not know the exact website that you are trying to use. This,
however, does lead us to the main point of our answer, which is to not
automatically presume that the Android device is the problem. Modern websites
should ideally be able to handle many different types of internet protocol including
Flash, Java and many others, but it is also common for them to offer support
for the huge number of mobile devices that may visit. With HTML5 fast becoming
an alternative and other technologies being used, it is not always acceptable
for a site to expect the visitor to do the work of making their equipment
compatible. If the devices are commonplace, the onus is on the website owners
to make the site work with as much of the population as possible. In your case,
if you have Flash and Java installed and it is still not working, the site
owners will need to be contacted again to find the right solution for you.
