Tips: trim your bloated contacts list with a custom sync group

Tips

Tips: trim your bloated contacts list with a custom sync group

April 5, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka

Android Tutorials, Beginner's Guide to Android

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Google Gesture Search is great, but its existence reminds me that I have way too many contacts on my Android phone. My phone has hundreds of contacts because Google auto-adds people I frequently email. That’s a great feature in Gmail, but its annoying on Android because I’m unlikely to call more than 20% of the people stored in my phone.

The simple fix for this problem is to create a special group of people to sync between Android and Google Contacts. This will give me much more control over who appears on my phone’s contacts.

WARNING: This method removes many contacts from syncing to the phone, which will affect the auto-complete feature in the Gmail application. Include people you frequently email if you want to auto-complete their address.

On Your Computer

Login to Gmail.com and click the “Contacts” tab. Then click the “Add Group” button that looks like this:
Label your new group “Android” or whatever term you choose to classify contacts.
Click on the “All Contacts” link to choose who will be included in your new group. Select as many people as you want by pressing the square radio button next to each person’s name.Tip: Clicking away from a name could erase all of the links that you post. I recommend adding people in groups of 10-20 to be safe.
Once your members are selected, click the “Groups” button and select “Android” to add them to that group.

On Your Android phone

This process may differ if your phone has a heavily-customized version of Android!

Android Contacts app

Open the “Contacts” app and press Menu> Edit Sync groups
Select “Android” or whatever name you assigned to your group
Press OK and you should be good to go.

Sony Ericsson Phones (XPERIA X10)

Press Menu > Settings > Data & Synchronization
Press Group Synchronization and then make sure that only “Android” is selected.
Press OK and you’ve now cut your contact list from 450 people to 105 relevant names you actually call or text.
Be sure to add new contact entries crated on the phone to the “Phone” contacts group to maintain two-way syncing.

HTC Hero

Open the “People” app and scroll to the right until you reach the Groups icon
Press Menu and select “Sync Groups”
Select “Android” and you’re phone will update to a more manageable list

Android Tutorials, communication, contacts, Tips

3 Comments

JarrettV says:

April 5, 2010 at 8:49 pm

why not only show contacts with phone number, should easily narrow down your list
GlassTech says:

November 18, 2010 at 1:09 pm

Ok, so here's something this doesn't cover. My dialer shows over 3 thousand contacts, 85% of which are doubles, triples, quadruples and more for some. However the People directory only shows the 200 or so contacts within my gmail contact list, which is everyone. Is there a way to cut down the dialer's address book?
- GlassTech Responder says:
  
  December 21, 2010 at 1:24 pm
  
  Sure log in to your google account on the web: http://www.google.com/contacts Then use the tools there to find duplicates and merge contacts that have been duplicated. It should be pretty straight forward.

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