Android contacts WTF moment!!! :eek:

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 00:39

Just opened the People app on my DesireZ and found in it the email addresses of a couple of hundred former students of mine from back when I was a teaching assistant at uni! :eek:

I have NO idea where it got them from, because they're not in my contacts anywhere - not on GMail, not in Outlook, not on anywhere else like Facebook or whatever! The way I used to contact them was I would keep all their addresses in a .txt file and then simply paste them all into the BCC field in an email - did the phone actually crawl through my emails and add every single person I ever corresponded with regardless of whether I had them in my contacts or not??? And if so, how the hell do I undo it? I can't possibly delete all these people one by one, I can't just hold down Shift and select multiple contact entries like I could on my old WinMo phone, and it's not like I can delete them in GMail/Outlook and then sync the deletions cause they're not even ON there!!!

I am seriously tempted to just nuke the phone and start over, it's THAT bad in there!!!

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 00:46

Oh, phew! Nevermind, I figured it out! It DID crawl through GMail and add every single person I ever emailed (including some spammers!), but I figured out how to get them out of there.

In case anyone's wondering, it's menu > view > Google, and then uncheck everything except System Group: My contacts in there.

It didn't actually delete them though. I now have 1,345 contacts on my phone... I'm not happy about that, but I guess as long as I don't have to actually see them...

mrk · 25 Jan 2011 at 01:30

They /are/ in GMail, you just didn't look hard enough perhaps

Contacts > Other Contacts.

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 01:57

Hmm... turns out you're right, but *I* certainly didn't add them!

Locke · 25 Jan 2011 at 03:02

Doesn't it store ones you've e-mailed? At least that's what happened on my old Gmail account.

Myshra · 25 Jan 2011 at 08:54

Yeah it does, they get automatically added to contacts ( http://contacts.google.com ) for ease of use. To remove your contacts either resync them via force update or delete the data from the contacts app (options > manage apps > contacts > delete data)

mrk · 25 Jan 2011 at 09:30

Or just delete all contacts in the "Other" folder in GMail, the change will push to Android within a few seconds.

I do an "other" prune every few weeks out of habit.

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 09:41

Yep, as I said, I realised that in my second post, and I just switched off displaying them in my phonebook

Much simpler than deleting them as I might actually need to email some of these people (albeit only about 10% of them... GMail has really spoiled me!)

Deleted member 77746 · 25 Jan 2011 at 10:04

It adds 'you emailed' automatically. Good job you got it sorted, it's a pain in da butt.

Aod · 25 Jan 2011 at 10:51

it's a pain initially.

then it becomes very very convenient.

englishpremier · 25 Jan 2011 at 13:43

I find this feature particularly annoying. The phone really ought to ask you if you want to import any contacts from gmail, not just do it.

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 14:03

Aod said:
it's a pain initially.

then it becomes very very convenient.

Convenient within the context of GMail.

Not for a phone!

mrk · 25 Jan 2011 at 14:05

Convenient or not, it takes 2 seconds to unsync, lol.

manveruppd · 25 Jan 2011 at 14:21

Yeah 2" once you know how, but going into your contacts and finding LITERALLY a thousand email addresses spamming the place instead of just the people you actually CALL is pretty disconcerting!

englishpremier · 25 Jan 2011 at 14:55

Khaaan! said:
Convenient or not, it takes 2 seconds to unsync, lol.

You shouldn't have to undo something.

That is like saying, well it's ok that the chavs are mugging and raping as you can always tell them to stop it.

roboffer · 25 Jan 2011 at 15:48

Khaaan! said:
Convenient or not, it takes 2 seconds to unsync, lol.

Deleting "other" contacts every couple of weeks isn't a solution. Having an option not to display people I haven't specifically saved as a contact in GMail is.

For all of its brilliant points, there are some major annoyances in Android.

mrk · 25 Jan 2011 at 15:49

You can have it so those people aren't shown, though. both solutions have been mentioned in this thread.

#1:

I prune my other contacts list out of routine and because I'm quite particular about keeping things minimal above all else.

englishpremier · 25 Jan 2011 at 16:13

That is different on the San Francisco, much cleaner and easier.

However really you don't want these contacts in your phone at all.

roboffer · 25 Jan 2011 at 16:16

Does that stop them appearing when you go to create a message? Haven't got my phone with me today so can't check.

If you can, it still proves that it's all a little over complicated as this is one of the biggest problems I've had with it and up to now I've just put up with it. As a developer myself a lot of Android is obvious it is functionality driven by developers.

mrk · 25 Jan 2011 at 16:24

roboffer said:
Does that stop them appearing when you go to create a message? Haven't got my phone with me today so can't check.

If you can, it still proves that it's all a little over complicated as this is one of the biggest problems I've had with it and up to now I've just put up with it. As a developer myself a lot of Android is obvious it is functionality driven by developers.

Yes, as per my screenshot, if it's unticked then those contacts in that group will not show when you begin typing a name in the To field when writing an SMS in the stock messaging app or Handcent - Those are the ones I have just tested it on.