iPhone Contacts and GMail Contacts - avoiding duplicates

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 09:42

I'm 100% I can't be the only one with this problem, yesterday I gave up and starting using the trial of MobileMe, but I don't want to be beaten by this...

GMail and Contacts:

In a nutshell, either my phone or GMail is creating duplicates. Not just once, but several times. It's ALWAYS with the same 5 numbers.

I've deleted every contact from the iPhone, waited, and they appear again within a few minutes.

I've deleted every contact from GMail, waited, and they appear again within a few minutes.

There's NO "Sync My Contacts With..." checked in iTunes.

Is there a definitive, guaranteed, this is the problem solution as to how to stop these damn duplicates from occurring?

Alex_L · 19 Jul 2010 at 12:08

Is gmail setup as exchange on the iPhone?

If it is, I think it defaults contact sync is turned on by default.

artaxerxes · 19 Jul 2010 at 12:14

There is a setting somewhere... or there used to be! I had to switch it off too.

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 12:52

Yeah GMail is setup as Exchange.

Thing is, I do want my contacts to Sync (i.e. any changes I make on web are pushed to phone and vice-versa), but the point is this works flawlessly apart from just 5 contacts that are duplicated.

I've tried all sorts, one of the contacts is called "Barry & Pat", wondering if the ampersand was causing the problem, so renamed it to "Barry and Pat", sure enough, a few minutes later, I get "Barry & Pat" duplicated 2-3 times, and just one "Barry and Pat".

If I delete them all, I get "Barry & Pat" coming back after a few minutes and then everytime I plug the iPhone (which causes iTunes to autostart), it duplicates it.

photoshop · 19 Jul 2010 at 13:39

log onto your mail account on a pc and edit your contacts. That way you will only get whats on your contacts list.

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 13:43

photoshop said:
log onto your mail account on a pc and edit your contacts. That way you will only get whats on your contacts list.

Contacts from where? Outlook? All gone, iTunes is set to NOT sync with anything.

Unless there's another program somewhere that's picking up Contacts that I'm totally unaware of.

mr.sly · 19 Jul 2010 at 13:46

Did you set your Google Account to sync with the Address Book? Maybe the contacts are still in there and they're syncing across, once they get pushed back to the server?

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 13:54

mr.sly said:
Did you set your Google Account to sync with the Address Book? Maybe the contacts are still in there and they're syncing across, once they get pushed back to the server?

Again, no.

Like I said, yesterday I deleted EVERY contact from my phone and EVERY contact from GMail and left it.

All was fine, started adding contacts in GMail and they synced to my phone perfect. Likewise (to test), added a few contacts on my Phone and they were synced with GMail.

After a while, I got the same 5 duplicates about 4 or 5 times appearing. Have absolutely no idea why.

Was going to totally give up, have gone onto a trial on MobileMe and turned off the GMail syncing on my phone.

Logged onto GMail this morning and went onto contacts just out of curiosity and saw about 20 contacts, 4x5 the contacts I've mentioned.

It's utterly baffled me!

mr.sly · 19 Jul 2010 at 14:00

Sorry I meant Address Book on OS X not on the actual iPhone, was a long shot anyway.

Have you tried this?

My friend had this problem too. Make sure you have all your contacts on google.com and back them up by exporting them to a file (just for safety). Now on the iPhone go to SETTINGS -> Mail,contacts, calendars -> then to your google sync account (the one with the contacts, calendars underneath it) Delete this account. Now follow the steps again to set up a google sync account using exchange, only this time when it asks you if you want to keep your existing numbers or delete them choose delete. As long as you have all you contacts on google, the next time you go into you iphone address book they will re-populate, and you won't have any duplicates.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google Mobile/thread?tid=2b25734989bc298f&hl=en

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 14:02

Ahhh, no not on OS X (yet).

Thanks for the link, glad to see I'm not the only one losing hair. Will certainly try it.

Again, many thanks for that

~J~ · 19 Jul 2010 at 22:27

Quick update, tried the above to absolutely no joy.

Only thing it never asked was if I wanted to delete the contacts already on the phone, but again, the same 5 numbers duplicated, have left it about 1hr and they've duplicated again so really no idea.