How to achieve a better contact organization? - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi,
One thing I really dislike on Android, is the very little flexibility on contacts organization. I can't seem to figure out a good way to organize all my contacts.
I have 2 problems with the current contacts organization:
Problem 1)
I like to have a contacts database with ALL my contacts and on that database I like to have the persons first and last name. However, for some of the contacts, I don't want to have their name displayed, I want to have something else instead; like a nickname for instance. I can't do what I want because of two simple things:
a) Google Contacts does have support for a "nickname" field, but Android doesn't. At least not on my Hero... I'm not sure but I believe the 2.1 ROMs already support this field if I recall correctly from the last time I tried one.
b) The People app on the HTC Hero (and probably the stock Android one but I don't know for sure) does not allow me to pick what I want to display as the contact's "name", if their real name or the nickname.
If these 2 things were possible, my problem would be solved. I could have my contacts database with their first and last names, but also with a nickname for some people where I could pick which one to display on my phone.
Problem 2)
My full contacts database on Google Contacts, includes every single person I ever contacted in my whole life since I had a mobile phone. Well, not exactly every single person cause I lost a few numbers over the years. But I have a big collection of names and phone numbers of people that I no longer can associate a face with or don't get in touch that often anymore.
However, I don't want to delete those numbers, so I know who's calling/texting/whatever (if that ever happens or if I need to contact them). But I also don't want all of them displayed on the main contacts list (People app on my case). Only a few contacts are the most important contacts to me, my family, closest friends, people that I get in touch from time to time, etc... Those are the ones that I wanted listed on the phone so I can quickly find one on the list if I need it.
Basically, I just want to hide a few groups of people from the main list. I still want/need them on the phone in case they call or I need to reach them (like I said above), but 95% of the time, they are cluttering the contacts list.
Now, it doesn't help much but, for those "less needed" contacts I placed them on a few different groups than the other "most contacted" contacts.
So, does anyone have any suggestions to help me fix, or at least workaround these organization problems? Does any one face the same or similar situations?

No suggestions, anyone?

Too complicated request?

aContact or Dialer One
This two app for contact maybe help you.
Not in evere question, but for me are very usefull.
You can switch betwen "saved" contact and all collected contact (google cont.).
aContact is for Android 1.5
Dialer One for Android 2.1 (1.6...?)

Related

[Q] Utterly stupid importing of "All Contacts" from Google.

Hi All,
Before you say it, I know what I'm doing and understand how Google contacts work, I had a HTC HD2 (thanks Pongster and XDA!) and I am used to Android.
I know how Google contacts work, infact I submitted a bug fix to AweSync to fix up their syncing of Google Contacts with Lotus Notes.
Why does the Samsung Galaxy 1 (and 2!) show me _ALL CONTACTS_ when trying to SMS people? or when I try to save a newly dialled number into contacts, it shows all contacts?
I don't want to SMS an email address! I don't want to sift through 1,300 contacts yet this idiot phone is showing me them.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/derpderp.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/diddlyderp.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/derpphone.jpg
It's listing email Address's in the SMS TO: field - yet I've CLEARLY unticked "All contacts" and I've made it only show contacts with a phone number.
What is wrong with this thing?
EDIT: also, forgetting my ring tone every time I reboot isn't impressing me either.
Okay, I can't answer all your problems, and I do agree that the management of contacts on this phone is pretty poor, but there's obviously ways round certain issues.
One thing that will immediately help you is to use the contacts app to send SMS, rather than the SMS app. Select your contact (filtered as shown in your post) and you can swipe them left to SMS or right to call. That's a pretty handy feature.
However, if you're sending a message to more than 1 person you're back to square 1. I'd strongly recommend getting GO SMS Pro and GO Contacts (both free) from the Market. They're excellent replacements and I'm sure you'll be a LOT happier with them.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
johncmolyneux said:
Okay, I can't answer all your problems, and I do agree that the management of contacts on this phone is pretty poor, but there's obviously ways round certain issues.
One thing that will immediately help you is to use the contacts app to send SMS, rather than the SMS app. Select your contact (filtered as shown in your post) and you can swipe them left to SMS or right to call. That's a pretty handy feature.
However, if you're sending a message to more than 1 person you're back to square 1. I'd strongly recommend getting GO SMS Pro and GO Contacts (both free) from the Market. They're excellent replacements and I'm sure you'll be a LOT happier with them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would go contacts solve my issue when saving a new phone number into my contactl ist?
wizzbang3 said:
Would go contacts solve my issue when saving a new phone number into my contactl ist?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does what you describe above. I don't know what you expect it to do though. You dial a number, click "Add to contacts" or "New contact" to either list all your contacts or create a new one.
is there any solution to this, i quite like the messaging app, but find it quite annoying when i have to search through hundreds of contacts, or else exit out to the contact application to text some1 who's actually in my contacts list ....
Its not a deal breaker for me, i prefer the stock than go sms or handcent, or any alternative i've tried, so if there is no fix i'll grin and bear it but if there is please help out
.... its not that i prefer the stock to any other, its just that no other provides anything that makes me want to move from stock, and since both will be running anyways it seems pointless to be wasting battery .... also i found double contacts problems with other apps aswell
Osmosae said:
is there any solution to this, i quite like the messaging app, but find it quite annoying when i have to search through hundreds of contacts, or else exit out to the contact application to text some1 who's actually in my contacts list ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's just poor design by Samsung.
wizzbang3 said:
It's just poor design by Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why? I think it is a good idea, since I very often MMS to email addresses! It is very handy to automatically downsize an image to MMS size when you are sending it to a person who you know will be looking at the email on their phone (e.g. my friend in Japan doesn't have MMS at all, over there nearly everything is email).
Been wondering about this too, i know the contact app you can customize what to show, which is fine, but the sms app show everyone you have been in contact with on google. Only "fix" i've found so far is to use another SMS app that can filter the contact list.
The solution is very simple. Just open display options in contacts and select only display contacts with numbers. Also untick everything that you don't want it to display. I don't save any numbers in phone or sim card so I save it to gmail account.
Even if I select only gmail it shows lots unnecessary contacts. So I went to gmail on my laptop and opened the contacts (phone book or something like that. Its been over a year so I don't remember)
I created a new category (u can choose an existing one) and transferred every single contact that I needed under it.
And thats it. Everytime I format my phone I just go to contact display settings on my phone and only choose the category that I made. And it only shows the contacts that I need.
It works also if u want to save a contact. I chose to save contacts to my gmail account when it asks. And everytime u save it saves it to the category that u choose.
I have been using this over a year and work flawlessly. I remember beig sick of choosing amongst 1000s of contacts.
I tried to explain as I could. If there is a problem ask me I will try to help.
Edit:
I realized this doesn't answer ur question about sms. This doesn't fix that SMS list behaviour.

[Q] Different Google Contacts merge themeselves into one Contact. Why?

I noticed a weird behaviour in my Google Contacts.
I don't know if Google Mail or my Android Phone (Galaxy Nexus with AOKP b30) is to blame.
But from time to time some random contacts seem to rename themselves into my own contact.
So instead of having just my Name once, there are several with my name, E-mail and phonenumber. But in addition to my information there are the different phone numbers that used to belong to other contacts which are then gone.
I tried to rename them manually again.
But after a day or two there are more contacts renamed and altered. I tried to delete all of the renamed contacts including my own, but again after a few days 8 of them kept popping up.
It's pretty annoying because I don't know every name that belongs to a number so often I'm left with just a number not knowing who it belonged to in the first place.
I searched for a similar issue but couldn't really find one. If there is a thread allready I'd be thankful if you pointed me in that direction if not I'd appreciate an help I can get.
Thanks!
nspreck said:
I noticed a weird behaviour in my Google Contacts.
I don't know if Google Mail or my Android Phone (Galaxy Nexus with AOKP b30) is to blame.
But from time to time some random contacts seem to rename themselves into my own contact.
So instead of having just my Name once, there are several with my name, E-mail and phonenumber. But in addition to my information there are the different phone numbers that used to belong to other contacts which are then gone.
I tried to rename them manually again.
But after a day or two there are more contacts renamed and altered. I tried to delete all of the renamed contacts including my own, but again after a few days 8 of them kept popping up.
It's pretty annoying because I don't know every name that belongs to a number so often I'm left with just a number not knowing who it belonged to in the first place.
I searched for a similar issue but couldn't really find one. If there is a thread allready I'd be thankful if you pointed me in that direction if not I'd appreciate an help I can get.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just had this happen on my galaxy s3 too.. very strange.. today is the first day it happened so i don't know if it will be a re-occurring problem or not (hope not though)
It is a feature of "People" which joins contacts. Issue 4979
Wish there was a way to disable it - totally unwanted as it joins unrelated contacts and I then can't find contacts because they have been merged with other random contacts - at least I can separate them when they are located, however the feature was not wanted in the first place.
can we find the code which implements this automerge functionality may be by decompiling into smali or getting source code for contactprovider or something m not sure and make a mod for the issue since it been long time google is not responding to issue.

[Q] Stock contacts and SMS apps - configuration problems

I moved from Samsung Galaxy S2 to S3 with a later Android version (4.3), and there are just a couple of things that are driving me crazy as far as the stock contacts and sms apps are concerned.
Before I decide to move to other apps (which I don't really want to do as I've been pretty glad about the stock apps so far):
How to change the generic picture for contacts?
I liked the earlier format with simple silhouettes in different colours and I totally hate the new creepy-looking faces with a smile, eyes, nose etc. (sorry, I am not allowed to post outside links yet, which is why I had to remove all the sample links from this question and the following ones, which may make my questions a little more difficult to understand).
How to remove the contact pictures besides the text messages?
Before, the text messages were displayed with text bubbles only.
Now there are little annoying contact pictures next to the messages. I've found a couple of threads about it on the Internet but no real solutions, unfortunately.
And this one has been bugging me since Galaxy S2:
How to hide all those contacts that include no phone number (i.e. those imported from my Google account)?
I am able to hide the contact in the normal view (if I simply scroll down the list, only phone contacts are displayed) but whenever I use the in-app search option, the e-mail contacts appear, too, which is pretty annoying (I use the search to find someone I want to call, not if I want to write an e-mail).
Anyone, anything? I know these aren't exactly the most interesting or serious problems, and they're rather Android- than phone-related... but I've spent a lot of time researching this and I've found no solution whatsoever (besides using other apps).
Question [Q] Stock contacts and SMS apps - configuration problems
I moved from Samsung Galaxy S2 to S3 with a later Android version (4.3), and there are just a couple of things that are driving me crazy as far as the stock contacts and sms apps are concerned.
Before I decide to move to other apps (which I don't really want to do as I've been pretty glad about the stock apps so far):
How to change the generic picture for contacts?
I liked the earlier format with simple silhouettes in different colours and I totally hate the new creepy-looking faces with a smile, eyes, nose etc. (sorry, I am not allowed to post outside links yet, which is why I had to remove all the sample links from this question and the following ones, which may make my questions a little more difficult to understand).
How to remove the contact pictures besides the text messages?
Before, the text messages were displayed with text bubbles only.
Now there are little annoying contact pictures next to the messages. I've found a couple of threads about it on the Internet but no real solutions, unfortunately.
And this one has been bugging me since Galaxy S2:
How to hide all those contacts that include no phone number (i.e. those imported from my Google account)?
I am able to hide the contact in the normal view (if I simply scroll down the list, only phone contacts are displayed) but whenever I use the in-app search option, the e-mail contacts appear, too, which is pretty annoying (I use the search to find someone I want to call, not if I want to write an e-mail).
Hi! Changing default generic picture is not possible without root at least(i think it might be best to use a custom rom maybe), removing the picture next to each sms is linked with the contact list so you should try other sms apps from playstore for that and hiding contact with no number in contact list is impossible - try to make a group with the ones that have number and one group with the ones that don't have numbers or remove the email only contact from google contact list(on gmail). Hope i gave you some directions Cheers!

[Q] How do you manage numbered contacts from different services ?

Hi everybody!
Simply put: how to backup only contacts with numbers to safe place ? Then the long story....
Im using stock 4.4.2 kitkat with galaxy s4+ and it seems impossible to seemly superior smartphone to give me an option to backup/organize/merge.. (you get the point contacts with phone numbers to one safe location, i.e memory card, sim card, or even phones own memory. So now I have contacts from sim, gmail, outlook, phone memory and if someone these fails, I lose the number if I dont give them to organization which is required to give them to terrorists, that itself gives you no reason whatsoever to trust big clouds in personal matters. Even if the servers and business were in EU, that would make too much a hassle to always backup and restore hundreds of contacts overrided many times each other by different services and many times copied themselves, so you in the end you have 5 Joe Duffs in your contact list with same number
Moreover, by default gmail (I think) put obsolete email-contacts to place(my contact list), where should be only real people, with real numbers and selected by me. Not cool.
This is somewhat frustating situation and not only because of the problem itself, if you managed to read through my rage hope i just missed something and you got the point since number by number copying is something you did even before cellphones and simcards.
Ps. I only found one solution earlier by googling and it was "merge contacts" but I dont have that option.
And up!
cannot believe that ppl just keep their numbers in whatever places :laugh:

How to show contacts with phone numbers ONLY?

I tried searching the net, but everything I can find relates to MM or earlier. I definitely fixed this issue when I first got this phone, so that only people with numbers were shown in my contacts list. Now I upgraded to Nougat just a few hours ago, and now I can't figure out how to do that again. That option doesn't seem to exist anymore! Am I missing something?? Or did they remove this option from the stock Contacts and Phone apps?
This is absurd. Pulling up Contacts shows a huge list of everyone I've ever interacted with over email, which is beyond stupid, imo. If I need to reach some person via email whom I don't text/call, then that's what the Gmail app is there for. What's the point of this mess? Sorry about the mini rant.
Same Problem
Same Phone, Same Problem, Same Question?!
I'm convinced now that, yes, Google really did think that a dysfunctional Contacts app is what the people want. So, the only solution here is to switch to third party apps. Oh well, not a big deal I guess.
I found a work around, create a new label in contacts and all the contacts with numbers to that label. Then you can customise the view on your phone to display only that label. If you ever add any contacts in the future with a phone number just ensure you add them to that label which you can do via your phone.

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