[BullGuard8]

This has only recently started happening.

most my whatsapp contacts appear as numbers only

so what I did was, clicked on ADD from the whatsapp app itself, then overwrite the contact available on my BB

it was fixed

then after a few hours again a lot of my contacts appear as a number only rather than the name of the contact as if I didn't have the contact stored on my mobile

what gives?

[dkonigsberg_wa]

Two questions:

1. What OS version is your phone running?
2. Are the contacts appearing as unknown, or as known contacts with a phone number as the "display" name?

(Unknown contacts are not on the Favorites list, and chat screens with them have Add/Block buttons at the top. Known contacts should be on the Favorites list, and won't show the Add/Block buttons.)

[BullGuard8]

Two questions:

1. What OS version is your phone running?
2. Are the contacts appearing as unknown, or as known contacts with a phone number as the "display" name?

(Unknown contacts are not on the Favorites list, and chat screens with them have Add/Block buttons at the top. Known contacts should be on the Favorites list, and won't show the Add/Block buttons.)

oh great to have someone from Whatsapp support on here

The OS is the latest by my carrier, which is Software Release: 10.2.1.537 ///// OS Version: 10.2.1.1925

The contacts simply appear with a phone number displayed rather than actually detecting that this number IS actually on my phone.

Bear in mind, that all contacts on my phone have the + sign before them followed by the country code followed by the city code followed by the number

Example:

+971XXBBBBBBB

[dkonigsberg_wa]

What I'm trying to figure out is whether:

1. WhatsApp isn't detecting these contacts in your address book
2. WhatsApp is detecting these contacts, but thinks the phone number is what it should use as the name to display for them

Do these phone-number contacts appear on the favorites list of the app?
On chat screens with these contacts, at the top of the conversation (if you scroll all the way to the top), do you see Add/Block buttons?

We depend on the system filling in a field in the contact record that tells us what name to display for a contact, and have seen cases where it doesn't put the right data in there. Trying to figure out whether or not that's the issue here.

[BullGuard8]

What I'm trying to figure out is whether:

1. WhatsApp isn't detecting these contacts in your address book
2. WhatsApp is detecting these contacts, but thinks the phone number is what it should use as the name to display for them

Do these phone-number contacts appear on the favorites list of the app?
On chat screens with these contacts, at the top of the conversation (if you scroll all the way to the top), do you see Add/Block buttons?

We depend on the system filling in a field in the contact record that tells us what name to display for a contact, and have seen cases where it doesn't put the right data in there. Trying to figure out whether or not that's the issue here.

yes they appear on the favorites list of the app. Never happened with my BB OS 7.1

What I noticed is...

I have my contacts all saved as +971CCBBBBBBB where C stands for the city code and B stands for the number

whatsapp seems to like this format more because when I add that unknown numver via whatsapp, it puts the number in this format: +971 CC BBB BB BB

Dunno why is it to sensitive

and the weird thing is it doesn't happen with everyone, it like randomly chooses which contacts to display as a number rather than a known contact and it gets fixed once I save the number in the format and number spacing it likes.

an app update is urgently required man

PS: as we are speaking, the issue is gone, but it's been there for the past 1 hour despite a few device reboots

[dkonigsberg_wa]

So there's a utility that will hopefully help us find out exactly what's happening:
Contacts Inspector - BlackBerry World

This app basically does two things: It shows you the list of contacts visible to 3rd party apps, and it shows you *exactly* what data about those contacts 3rd party apps can read. If you can install this app, the following would be very helpful:

• Find one of these contacts in the list it shows
• Tap on it to show the full details for that contact
• Use the "save" action on the details page to save that information to a file
• Use the "Contact Support" feature from within WhatsApp to write in about this problem
• Reply to the auto-response Email you get, attaching the file with contact details
• PM me with the ticket number, so I can take a look

[BullGuard8]

So there's a utility that will hopefully help us find out exactly what's happening:
Contacts Inspector - BlackBerry World

This app basically does two things: It shows you the list of contacts visible to 3rd party apps, and it shows you *exactly* what data about those contacts 3rd party apps can read. If you can install this app, the following would be very helpful:

• Find one of these contacts in the list it shows
• Tap on it to show the full details for that contact
• Use the "save" action on the details page to save that information to a file
• Use the "Contact Support" feature from within WhatsApp to write in about this problem
• Reply to the auto-response Email you get, attaching the file with contact details
• PM me with the ticket number, so I can take a look

whenever I try to save a contact, it says unable to save file. I tried to save to both my media card and my device

I have given it full permissions

[dkonigsberg_wa]

Its worked for me. You might want to try different folders.

However, taking screenshots of the "Properties" and "Attributes" tabs should provide almost as much information as the file, so that also works.

[BullGuard8]

I sent the email with the file but I only got a general FAQ email back with no ticket number

[dkonigsberg_wa]

I think you have to contact us from within the app. Swipe down from above the screen, tab "About", then tap "Contact Support". Put in there a brief description of the issue, and tap "Send". That will send us an Email that you should get an automatic response to with a ticket number. Reply to that Email with the file.

[JAS0NB0URNE]

I think your problem is you are opening the wrong app, BBM is the one you should try

Posted with my ?Q10 running 10.2.1.1925.

[Bold9780_white]

I believe this happens to me also randomly on my z30. Noticed that it only happens on linked contacts. For phone numbers, i try to not link them with facebook, bbm et,. That solved the problem on me. Never had the same issues again.

Posted via CB10

[BullGuard8]

I believe this happens to me also randomly on my z30. Noticed that it only happens on linked contacts. For phone numbers, i try to not link them with facebook, bbm et,. That solved the problem on me. Never had the same issues again.

Posted via CB10

ohh that's what probably happened! still, this isn't right and Whatsapp need to come up with an update ASAP I think

[the_igg]

Dkonigsberg_wa maybe it has something to do with linked contacts? I noticed whatsapp has been having problems with linked contacts appearing In favorites since the app was released. Don't know know if this is a whatsapp bug or a BlackBerry 10 OS bug

Posted via CB10

[dkonigsberg_wa]

Handling linked contacts and 1st-party/3rd-party data permissions differences has been an on-going challenge for BlackBerry 10. When you see unexpected data in our app, it is almost always because that's the data that the system is giving us. To be clear, the first-party apps see a different view of contact data with different rules than 3rd party apps. These rules cover data from "social" and "work" sources. When things improve, its either because bugs got fixed in the OS or we figured out how to work around them. But not everything can be worked around.

The best way to see who is to blame is to use a standalone test app that shows you exactly what 3rd party apps see from the address book. This is one such app:
Contacts Inspector - BlackBerry World

One hope is that this app will make it possible to collect more useful bug reports from users, so we can better work around the issues.

[BullGuard8]

Handling linked contacts and 1st-party/3rd-party data permissions differences has been an on-going challenge for BlackBerry 10. When you see unexpected data in our app, it is almost always because that's the data that the system is giving us. To be clear, the first-party apps see a different view of contact data with different rules than 3rd party apps. These rules cover data from "social" and "work" sources. When things improve, its either because bugs got fixed in the OS or we figured out how to work around them. But not everything can be worked around.

The best way to see who is to blame is to use a standalone test app that shows you exactly what 3rd party apps see from the address book. This is one such app:
Contacts Inspector - BlackBerry World

One hope is that this app will make it possible to collect more useful bug reports from users, so we can better work around the issues.

I found out the issue and maybe you may want to share this with your colleagues.

On my Q10, I had erased all my local contacts, and relied only on having them synced on my Zoho Email account that is setup on my BlackBerry.

The issue with that is,

1) BlackBerry OS 10 no longer has fields of Mobile 1, Mobile 2, Work 1, Work 2, like BB OS 7.1 had.

So what I was doing, let's see I add a contact named John Smith, John Smith has 2 mobiles and 1 work number, so I would set the first number to Mobile, set the 2nd number to Mobile, and set the 3rd number to Work.

When you save the contact, it appears file, 2 mobile numbers and 1 work numbers. But if you check after a while, the 2nd mobile number you added, would have magically disappeared, since the email synced contacts cannot keep to same Mobile number fields. so I end up with only 1 mobile numbers.

Now that is why in whatsapp, it is showing those numbers as unknown rather than displaying the contact name, it is because the mobile number associated with whatsapp got deleted with the email sync I had setup.

Solution, I am going through each one of my contacts, unlinking them from my Zoho Email sync, and copying them to my Local contacts. Issue fixed since the Local contacts does allow you to have 2 same field numbers, like Mobile, and Mobile, etc.

[SG1119]

I've been using BB Z3 for a few months now and facing the same problem with whatsapp unable to detect contacts. Its very moody and picks up the contacts if they are saved in a particular format.

All my contacts which earlier reflected in "favourites" are not there, so if I need to connect with someone on whatsapp, I have to ask them to ping me first so I can add them back on my list. This is really a problem!!

Is there a way to synch whatsapp contacts with device contacts?
Had written to whatsapp support team from the device itself, though all their solutions havn't worked.

My other friends using BB-Z10 and BB-Z3 are also facing the same problem.

[dkonigsberg_wa]

The problem is not the format your contacts are saved in, but the account the contact data is coming from. There are many account types on BB10 that no normal 3rd party app (yes, that includes WhatsApp) can read. When you edit a contact, reformat the phone number, and save it again, you're actually creating a second record for that contact in a place that is readable by 3rd party apps.

The most common cause of this is when phone numbers in your address book are coming from a social network account (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn). However, there can be other causes such as work/BES accounts.

The quickest way to see what sources a contact's data is coming from, is to tap the "Links" action when viewing the contact in your address book. Another approach is using the Contacts Inspector app.

[Marie Gingras]

I had the same problem and realized that the contacts that were transferred to my Q10 whatsapp were my Facebook contacts. Here is how I fixed the problem. Installed BB Link on my desktop. Connected my old device. Received an error message stating device is not supported. Clicked the Transfer data button. Transferred data. Then connected my Q10, follow instructions and voil�. All whatsapp contacts appeared and were sorted by name not by phone number.
Hope this helps