[bob_tn]

Omnitech,
Thanks for the time you've taken to try out the different backup methods. And most importantly posting your results

I'm pretty sure it has already been mentioned but I'll do it again.
Contacts management is one of the most important and fundamental uses for a business phone.
Why can't the designers realize this and fix the problem? Who knows.

I've been lucky and not experienced some of the horror stories I've read above. Only some duplicates and triplicates from time to time and occasionally phone numbers mis-matched. But I think some of the things you've touched on have helped me figure out why they happened.

I surely hope someone at BlackBerry involved in the contacts portion of the OS is monitoring this series of posts. It really gives them some real world examples of the problems encountered with the most basic of business tools.

Thanks again.



Posted via CB10

[anon3969612]

Chuckle... obviously nobody read the large disclaimer I put on my linked how-to post...

You dont have to set up your contacts this way. In fact, if I have a simple name and number contact, I left it as is.

I was answering AnimalPak200's open ended question about a simple alphabetical organizer. That's what I did with multi-phone contacts to create a simple contact page for an organization that I have several contacts with, as BB10 is not set up in its contact fields to deal with more than one person per record You cannot change the default headings for additional phone numbers other than Mobile Work Home or Other. You cannot specify names or custom information in the Phone fields. It is set up for one person per record, and I wanted multiple contacts per record in some cases.

Also, if you enter a phone number in any of the phone fields in Outlook it automatically adds a text number field in BB10 contacts regardless if it is a landline and I don't want a text field added to my contact for that number. It makes for a horribly cluttered contact card... I cannot change this and I hate it.

The field mapping between Outlook and BB10 contacts doesn't work correctly... as Omni has pointed out at length in the posts above. So of course it will render functions such as call display useless for contacts set up this way. However I was getting incorrect names coming up on call display anyway, before I changed and edited contacts so how is that any better if it is WRONG?

Originally Posted by OTCHRussell
I can just see myself doing that with all 1400 contacts I have in Outlook!!!!!!!
What a waste of time!!

Another chuckle... I went through all my Outlook contacts intermittently over the course of three days at work, consolidating, deleting duplicates changing some, leaving some alone. Went from 1130 to 976 contacts. Needed to be gone through and pruned anyway. My brother sorted his 1400 contacts in about that much time.

Spend a little less time on the forums, it's amazing what you can get done.

[madman0141]

If your BlackBerry Device decides you don't need that contact then you don't.

[FSeverino]

How is anyone supposed to get any work done when this app is constantly deleting my contacts, rearranging everything, duplicating everything. It's driving me crazy. I just needed a very important number which had been saved in my phone for a year. And now it's just gone. Wtf is going on here and is there a way to reboot this app so it hopefully comes back?

Z30 10.2.1.537

I haven't had any deleted, but I've had a lot duplicated. For no reason at all.

Posted via CB10

[Doggerz]

Duplicated. Deleted. Partially Deleted.. You name it. No confidence at all. I've literally taken screen shots of all my contacts and rely on pictures because the app randomly loses bits of information of a contact, if not the entire contact.

There is no excuse for this. It's insane. BlackBerry is suppose to be reliable and businesslike. This is one app that delusional BlackBerry fans can't say is 'a toy'. This is one time you can't say that BlackBerry does it better than android or iOS.

Everyone that sticks with BlackBerry (including myself) is like a parent who enables their child's meth addiction by continuing to support it.

Chen should have fixed this but it's his mission to kill BlackBerry not fix it. If it were up to Chen we wouldn't have phones we'd have 2 cans and a string.

Z30 / STA100-5 / 10.2.1.2234 / T-Mobile USA

[Omnitech]

Duplicated. Deleted. Partially Deleted.. You name it. No confidence at all. I've literally taken screen shots of all my contacts and rely on pictures because the app randomly loses bits of information of a contact, if not the entire contact.

What are you syncing contacts with, if any?

Cloud? (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, iCloud, Facebook, etc.)

Outlook, OS-X contacts?

You have any Android or IM apps that use contacts? ie Skype, WhatsApp, etc?

[Doggerz]

What are you syncing contacts with, if any?

Cloud? (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com, iCloud, Facebook, etc.)

Outlook, OS-X contacts?

You have any Android or IM apps that use contacts? ie Skype, WhatsApp, etc?

I don't use Facebook. I do use twitter and that always causes frustration in the contacts app. I stopped synching my Gmail. I only have it set for SIM card and local. But the twitter keeps switching back on by itself. I hate opening my contacts and seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson listed like he is a personal friend of mine. Wish he was.

I don't backup and restore my phone when upgrading the OS because that always causes trouble.

I feel frustrated because my 9810 was so reliable. But the OS is outdated. I understand why people are going to Android. It's not because they want to. It's because BlackBerry has released an OS before it's ready and reliable for the public. They were too late.

With Chen in charge I don't see them improving the OS. It would be easy to stay loyal if a CEO liked his companies fans. But I see him as here to nail the coffin closed on BlackBerry.

Z30 / STA100-5 / 10.2.1.2234 / T-Mobile USA

[endevour]

Just a side-note but I usually buy/use tools so they do work for me or at least make work easier... not the other way around - me doing their work :P

[Omnitech]

I don't use Facebook. I do use twitter and that always causes frustration in the contacts app. I stopped synching my Gmail. I only have it set for SIM card and local. But the twitter keeps switching back on by itself.

When I see people reporting things like "this thing does something randomly, and then switches back on after I turn it off" etc, I think you have OS problems then which are not likely helping with the contacts issue.

In my case, I have so much going on on my main Z10 and with around 100 3rd-party apps installed, it's a huge PITA and liability to wipe everything and start "from scratch" every time I want to update the OS.

I have had very good luck overall with doing either in-place/non-destructive updates, or restoring from backup to a new OS install.

But this last time when I updated to 10.2.1.2228, I started getting "weird problems" like BBW not being able to uninstall certain apps, the Android runtime crashing a lot, etc.

So I bit the bullet and spent all weekend (still not done) doing a fresh OS install and manual restore of whatever I could backup/restore with 3rd-party apps, combined with all sorts of manual re-configuring. (I mentioned this in a previous post)

As I had hoped, the BBW and Android problems disappeared after that.

So if I were in your shoes I would consider that, but before you do that I would recommend using one of the contact management apps that will go through and remove bad links and duplicates etc before you restore a bunch of junk back to the fresh install.

Then start by having ALL syncing disabled from the start, and also the "lookup additional information" thing in the contacts app. Then when it seems as if things are running stable (and after doing backups), you can slowly start adding cloud services and/or syncing one-by-one and see how it goes.

[Omnitech]

So are we ready for round number 2 of "Offering Sacrifices to the BB10 Contacts Goddess"??

Another day spent largely wrangling with my BB10 contacts. This is a followup on my previous post about exporting/importing contacts and the trials and tribulations thereof. You can review it here:

I have $#!?* had it with this contacts app. (Post #100)

So first the good news. As you recall, I previously discovered that 2 out of 3 third-party contacts backup/management apps I used during my OS upgrade dropped some of my contacts data (the "Other address" field) when exporting it. One of those - ContactsExchange - only suffered this indignity if I chose to save the data in tab-delimited format. (Its vCard export was fine) So I contacted manysmallapps / macroberry and mentioned this issue, along with a link to my post. Lo-and-behold, a few days later they had updated their app with a fix. I've loved the apps I've bought from them and their support is excellent, and this was another excellent response.

Now the not so good news: instead of "2 out of 3", actually "3 out of 3" of those apps dropped some of my contacts data on export.

Today I went to make a phone call to a local store and discovered their contact record was nowhere to be found on my phone. I had been mildly curious why when I did the contact import after my OS upgrade there were 30-40 fewer records than I thought had been there before - but I figured at the time (don't ask me why) that maybe it was because some empty records or dupes or SIM contacts had been consolidated or something. Or maybe it was just my senile aging memory playing tricks on me. As it turns out, I was actually missing about 40 contacts. The store contact was one of them, but now I had to figure out what else had been lost. Lovely!

Unfortunately I had no handy tool for comparing the contacts on the device with the contacts in an export/import file, so I had to do this manually. Imported a copy of the original tab-delimited file created by ContactsExchange into Excel, then went through the whole database comparing those records to the file exported by BackupPro (Which I had chosen to use for my contact export/import), trying to figure out which records were missing or corrupted. (Remember the ContactsExchange file had its own issue - the missing "Other Address" fields - but at least I knew about that. Mostly I was looking for entirely missing records.)

So after a while a pattern became evident: BackupPro had failed to export 90% of the records that had a "/" (forward slash) character in the Company name field. AAAAHHH. But the scarier part is it A) didn't do this on ALL the records like that, and B) it didn't seem to care if the forward slash character appeared in some other fields. (ie "Nickname") That is the kind of thing that doesn't make me feel particularly confident of such a tool maintaining consistent and predictable data integrity. Sigh.

So after going through the whole list and finding all the missing records, doing a bit more data cleanup and importing and more data cleanup, I may finally be in decent shape with my (non-synced) contacts.

Don't ask me how many hours I spent on this.

Oh but here's the kicker:

In going through the contacts a bazillion times I noticed a couple of records which had a single character "S" in the "First Name" field. Apparently this occurs sometimes when a record is open for editing, I think it's a touchscreen UI slip when I'm swiping up or something. Anyway, I deleted that character in both those records. No biggie, right?

But it was still showing up in the contacts list on both of them. Not in the record itself, but in the search results page. So I tried to edit each record and look at all the fields - nothing. Then I did a selective export of just those records using ContactsExchange in vCard format. No such character visible. Then I tried exporting to tab-delimited format. Still nothing showing. Ugh.

So I wondered if the device was caching those fields in its search cache or something. Tried closing and re-opening the Contacts app. Nope. Tried restarting the device a few times. Nope.

Sigh. I sure hope that this is just something cached in their search cache and it gets updated/purged every 24 hours or something. If not, that would be a really annoying bug. Even if it does go away, sure would be nice if we were told in some documentation somewhere that the OS likes to "hang on" to things sometimes.

On the upside, I now have more material to make a definitive post on different methods of rebooting your BB10 device, which I plan to do shortly.

[endevour]

So are we ready for round number 2 of "Offering Sacrifices to the BB10 Contacts Goddess"??
...

From post to post I get a bit more frightened, but thanks for the heads-up and all the hours (or might it be days if not weeks already) you put in your research!
Lets just hope someone at BlackBerry reads this or is as concerned as we are.

Whenever I look at the SDK roadmap, reading 'Account (management)' (for android) a small part in me hopes that this means they HAVE TO overhaul the whole contacts db, storing, caching, mayhem thing overall to make that even work.
May the contact gods have mercy on our souls.

[Raestloz]

Contacts is a real gem when it works. The way they combine everything into one is amazing. You'd know all about a person if you have their social media accounts, all in one sitting!

Sadly, I think that's precisely why it doesn't work. I personally think it's a nice feature, it's just that most of the time what's on your Facebook doesn't necessarily translate into something Contacts-worthy.

Z10 STL100-1/10.2.1.2102

[CyberMan2013]

It happens to me so often that is frustrating since I don't know who is calling me before answering.
I don't know how it was before the update; i've updated to 10.2.1.2141 right after I got the device.

Posted via CB10

Open the phone app then repeatedly swipe diagonally down-left from the top-right corner of the screen until the screen blanks off and reappears with a blank home screen. That resets the phone app and clears the contact names not showing up glitch which often reappears after the phone is shut down or the battery dies. The same gesture also resets the hub.

Posted via CB10

[OTCHRussell]

So are we ready for round number 2 of "Offering Sacrifices to the BB10 Contacts Goddess"??

Another day spent largely wrangling with my BB10 contacts. This is a followup on my previous post about exporting/importing contacts and the trials and tribulations thereof. You can review it here:

I have $#!?* had it with this contacts app. (Post #100)

So first the good news. As you recall, I previously discovered that 2 out of 3 third-party contacts backup/management apps I used during my OS upgrade dropped some of my contacts data (the "Other address" field) when exporting it. One of those - ContactsExchange - only suffered this indignity if I chose to save the data in tab-delimited format. (Its vCard export was fine) So I contacted manysmallapps / macroberry and mentioned this issue, along with a link to my post. Lo-and-behold, a few days later they had updated their app with a fix. I've loved the apps I've bought from them and their support is excellent, and this was another excellent response.

Now the not so good news: instead of "2 out of 3", actually "3 out of 3" of those apps dropped some of my contacts data on export.

Today I went to make a phone call to a local store and discovered their contact record was nowhere to be found on my phone. I had been mildly curious why when I did the contact import after my OS upgrade there were 30-40 fewer records than I thought had been there before - but I figured at the time (don't ask me why) that maybe it was because some empty records or dupes or SIM contacts had been consolidated or something. Or maybe it was just my senile aging memory playing tricks on me. As it turns out, I was actually missing about 40 contacts. The store contact was one of them, but now I had to figure out what else had been lost. Lovely!

Unfortunately I had no handy tool for comparing the contacts on the device with the contacts in an export/import file, so I had to do this manually. Imported a copy of the original tab-delimited file created by ContactsExchange into Excel, then went through the whole database comparing those records to the file exported by BackupPro (Which I had chosen to use for my contact export/import), trying to figure out which records were missing or corrupted. (Remember the ContactsExchange file had its own issue - the missing "Other Address" fields - but at least I knew about that. Mostly I was looking for entirely missing records.)

So after a while a pattern became evident: BackupPro had failed to export 90% of the records that had a "/" (forward slash) character in the Company name field. AAAAHHH. But the scarier part is it A) didn't do this on ALL the records like that, and B) it didn't seem to care if the forward slash character appeared in some other fields. (ie "Nickname") That is the kind of thing that doesn't make me feel particularly confident of such a tool maintaining consistent and predictable data integrity. Sigh.

So after going through the whole list and finding all the missing records, doing a bit more data cleanup and importing and more data cleanup, I may finally be in decent shape with my (non-synced) contacts.

Don't ask me how many hours I spent on this.

Oh but here's the kicker:

In going through the contacts a bazillion times I noticed a couple of records which had a single character "S" in the "First Name" field. Apparently this occurs sometimes when a record is open for editing, I think it's a touchscreen UI slip when I'm swiping up or something. Anyway, I deleted that character in both those records. No biggie, right?

But it was still showing up in the contacts list on both of them. Not in the record itself, but in the search results page. So I tried to edit each record and look at all the fields - nothing. Then I did a selective export of just those records using ContactsExchange in vCard format. No such character visible. Then I tried exporting to tab-delimited format. Still nothing showing. Ugh.

So I wondered if the device was caching those fields in its search cache or something. Tried closing and re-opening the Contacts app. Nope. Tried restarting the device a few times. Nope.

Sigh. I sure hope that this is just something cached in their search cache and it gets updated/purged every 24 hours or something. If not, that would be a really annoying bug. Even if it does go away, sure would be nice if we were told in some documentation somewhere that the OS likes to "hang on" to things sometimes.

On the upside, I now have more material to make a definitive post on different methods of rebooting your BB10 device, which I plan to do shortly.

This gets more and more complicated!! I have also spent HOURS trying to straighten up my contacts. Now at least when a friend calls it shows her name instead of her husband's.

Posted via CB10 on my Q10

[Omnitech]

In going through the contacts a bazillion times I noticed a couple of records which had a single character "S" in the "First Name" field. Apparently this occurs sometimes when a record is open for editing, I think it's a touchscreen UI slip when I'm swiping up or something. Anyway, I deleted that character in both those records. No biggie, right?

But it was still showing up in the contacts list on both of them. Not in the record itself, but in the search results page. So I tried to edit each record and look at all the fields - nothing. Then I did a selective export of just those records using ContactsExchange in vCard format. No such character visible. Then I tried exporting to tab-delimited format. Still nothing showing. Ugh.

So I wondered if the device was caching those fields in its search cache or something. Tried closing and re-opening the Contacts app. Nope. Tried restarting the device a few times. Nope.

Sigh. I sure hope that this is just something cached in their search cache and it gets updated/purged every 24 hours or something. If not, that would be a really annoying bug. Even if it does go away, sure would be nice if we were told in some documentation somewhere that the OS likes to "hang on" to things sometimes.

Update: the "phantom S character" is still present in those two records. It shows up in the search results page and at the top of the record when viewing it, but not when editing it.

The eternal mystical mysteries of BlackBerry 10...

[jlxgironda]

I have given up on the contacts app altogether

Posted via CB10

[wilkto]

Here's a thought. Recently downloaded "Movie Library". It has a built-in feature to back-up the database, for that matter so does "Password Keeper". Why can't the contacts app as well. I'm not a Dev but surely it can't be that difficult. Anything has to be better than Link.

Posted via ZedTen

[Sergiu1337]

Just found out that all my twitter contacts are duplicated. Hmm...




Posted via CB10