[TheBirdDog]

Wow... I never noticed this thread before. Looks like some of you have really took a tumble down the old rabbit hole!

I also was extremely frustrated with the contacts app; not being able to properly link contacts and duplicate entries almost had me ready to throw my phone against the wall.

I found that the IntouchApp for contacts magically simplified all of the problems that I was having. Sure, I don't really know where all of my contacts are. I don't know if they are locally stored on my phone, Gmail, Outlook, or a combination of all of these (most likely). However, once I synced everything with this app, all of my duplicates were merged, and I am able to synchronize my contacts across all of my devices without duplicates or missing entries.

I understand that some people have different needs and want to keep some contact groups separate but this doesn't apply to me. I just want to have access to all of my contacts whenever I need them and I want the list to be organized well.

I do wish that there was a more clear way that you could access and use "local contacts"... perhaps a missing feature in BlackBerry Link?

Anyway... thanks for putting in all of the time to share your findings with those who might take a similar tumble down the vortex of BlackBerry's contacts app.

[kgbbz10]

I do wish that there was a more clear way that you could access and use "local contacts"... perhaps a missing feature in BlackBerry Link?

Local contacts is just a folder saved on the device memory. It's like anything saved on the device, cnce it's wiped it's gone forever.

BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

[TheBirdDog]

Local contacts is just a folder saved on the device memory. It's like anything saved on the device, cnce it's wiped it's gone forever.

BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

Well, that's what I mean... it leaves room for it to be something more. The InTouchApp for contacts allows you to access and edit them from the Web on your Desktop. It would be nice if BlackBerry would give you some similar extended contact management functionality. If not from your device directly, then from the desktop software. I suppose you can do this somewhat with Blend, however, this really just mirrors what's on the device rather than adding any additional control.

[TSY-CB]

Facebook and linkedin contacts are just lists from those web services that are grabbed by the contact app just like contact lists from the email services. They need to be linked together most of the time.

Turns out I lied to you. The two seperate accounts don't sync together automatically.
I went through and made a fake contact list to see what would happen and had two separate email services syncing contacts. They did not merge or flake out in any way. I can create a new contact to one or both without any duplicates as it links automatically. If I delete without unlinking it deletes from both. If I delete after unlinking the other is still saved.

When you first setup your accounts you will have some odd behavior. If you have both contact lists with the same contacts you will get duplicates until you manually link them together. And then you might get duplicate entries. So using the same contact on both lists isn't ideal unless they are new contacts added after the accounts are in place. But still not ideal.


BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

Yeah, that was the whole idea, keeping two separate contact lists w/o any overlap but now, I've got a contact "smoothie" on BOTH accounts and I have to go through each one (1000+ ea) to fix the ****** thing

[RyanGermann]

I do wish that there was a more clear way that you could access and use "local contacts"... perhaps a missing feature in BlackBerry Link?

I will add this to the first post, but I was using the latest release of BB10 on my Z30 (as of this post) and in the Contacts App, on the Tab bar, I could choose "Local Contacts" as a discrete set of contacts. That makes things simpler. I believe the general behaviour in terms of adding information to linked contacts has also improved.

[TSY-CB]

I will add this to the first post, but I was using the latest release of BB10 on my Z30 (as of this post) and in the Contacts App, on the Tab bar, I could choose "Local Contacts" as a discrete set of contacts. That makes things simpler. I believe the general behaviour in terms of adding information to linked contacts has also improved.

Any way of being a little more explanatory? I've typically stayed away from Link 'cept to backup/restore when installing leaks. My contacts exist in two accounts - office's active exchange server (which is actually 3rd party hosted off-site), and my gmail account. Populating a new BB10 install's contacts list is done by creating accounts to those two.....which is when the chaos ensues.

It's occured to be, apropos of the italic'd sentence above, that it may be that the backup contains the contacts, so after that is restored, adding the live linked accounts will add atop what's already installed - this, however, only explains the duplicate issue. To test this, I created custom backups omitting contacts, as well as removing the accounts (which deletes the associated contacts) before creating the back up. Still no joy.

I am going to have to revert to a complete vanilla re-install, setting the entire phone up w/o restoring backups. A arduous task which seems to be the only option at this point.

Will keep y'all updated.

[crackberry_geek]

EDIT! Ok, MIRACLE OF MIRACLES! On the latest BB10.3.2 as of this writing (what was it, .2274? .2474? Something like that) there is now a "discrete" Action Tab button for "Local Contacts". You know in the Contacts App, you touch the leftmost button on the bottom bar (it's called the Action Bar, and the button is the, erm, Action Tabs button, I think) and the Tabs menu will fly out and show all the various address lists / categories: there is now one for Local Contacts, so you can go through and prune them without having to manually disable or disconnect the remote / synced contacts. It makes things a lot easier to organize and understand.

EDIT new info at the bottom of this post re: editing Linked contacts (DON'T DO IT!)

I have been an outspoken critic of BlackBerry 10's contact management since the get go... but recently I decided to try to wrangle my contacts into submission a bit, and I thought I'd post what I did to make BB's contacts & calendars work a bit better for me.

This is not a simple process and requires you to examine your contacts, from all sources, and do some pruning of your contact list. It's pretty much a manual process too... the apps don't give you a whole bunch of help and there is little in the way of "bulk" migration, but contacts and calendar are so vital to getting the most out of a BB10 device, I think the effort does pay off.

There are still some UI issues with the Contacts app in particular that should be fixed, but you can work around them, and a fix shouldn't be hard and will hopefully be forthcoming.

The whole "Local" thing.

The idea that something called "Local" contacts and calendar exist but aren't discretely available for interaction is an oversight in the UI. The understanding that "Local" contacts are logically not synced to an external source like Gmail contacts or Outlook contacts may be unclear (my experience is with Gmail contacts).

If there was a filter in the Action Tab Overflow menu for "Local" contacts just as there is for local calendar items, that would go some ways to making the distinctions clear. Furthermore, in the case of linked contacts, something on the contact record display screen that shows where all the data in each distinct field is coming from: perhaps a little square just 10 x 10 pixels in the top left corner of a data field that shows the colour-coded contact source for a given field, then a different colour or multiple colours if the field value is being drawn from multiple sources in a linked contact. Little "moments of delight" (as Mike L used to call them) where the user can see exactly what's going on, if they care to look, but that UI element is not obtrusive. "Delight".

You might want to start by turning off display of contacts from Twitter or Facebook. As much as it makes me feel important, Anne Murray is NOT really a contact of mine so when I'm sorting contacts, having her in there isn't helping me.

As I said I'd been using Gmail contacts, one big bag of a list for all my contacts... but they did get messed up somehow along the way possibly by improper auto linking on BB10... but a mess is just an opportunity to clean up, so I got to it.

The first thing I did was I unlink all my contacts: I just closed my eyes and did it, dreading how many possible octuplcate entries there might be. Turns out it wasn't too bad, but if I recall how many times I manually relinked all my extended family contact entries from Facebook and Linked in and all their email addresses oi, it could have been worse.

I also established a separate contact list for my professional contacts: everything that I'd use my real name for, like business meetings, medical services, banking, etc. Making my master contact list my "personal" email that I use when signing up for services that I don't want to have my credentials was not a mistake: the mistake was not having a SEPARATE contact list. (p.s. I've even discovered how to integrate Gmail contacts and calendar with my desktop Thunderbird email client and that makes all this worth it times infinity plus one... but I won't be talking about that much here).

After creating the separate contact list, I did multi-select in my current single contact list and did a "copy to" to get those contacts into the new list... I didn't see a "move to" option, so I had to first do the copy. Note that if you have a lot of calendar entries tied to specific contacts in this manner, well, that's even more hassle to clean up, but I think it's worth the effort. Perhaps a future feature of BB10 would be to prompt "you have appointments with this contact: update the appointment to include the new contact?" feature would be possible. That would be very helpful, even if you have to click "ok" a whole lot to confirm.

So now I have a lot of duplicates contacts, in both my contact lists.

So I switch to my Calendar and look for days with appointments (I kind of like how the all day appointments are boxes, the partial day appointments are circles, empty boxes and circles if the appointment is prior to 'today'... and I know there's a lot of debate on the new 10.3 calendar but I'm getting used to it, I admit).

Wherever there's an appointment with a contact, I just delete the contact info from the appointment. The alternative is that I have to send the contact an email. I can't add someone to an appointment WITHOUT sending them an email. I think BlackBerry should make it optional whether or not to send an email when you include a contact that has an email address in an appointment: or at least provide the means to override it by choosing "add contact to appointment but don't notify"... something like that... but that's not the way it works so unless you want to send an email to the contact to whom you have already sent an email (which may be undesirable for one reason or another) just delete the contact info from the appointment and hope they show up when you do.

So, since I was willing to just remove contacts entries from appointments records rather than add them back in (because it's important I know about the appointment, not specifically who is also involved) I'm able to work with this. If you MUST include your contacts in your appointments, then you will either have to allow BB10 to notify them again, or not completely move the contact until the last appointment with which they are associated is passed.

Oh, and for fun, for all the contacts for whom their Birthday is shown (a feature of GMail contacts: they set up a separate 'calendar' of appointments for birthdays entered in your contact list) I went ahead and edited their birthday 'appointment' to start on the year of their birth, and repeat annually forever. When I went far enough back however like to my parents or something, the little square indicating the all-day appointment appeared on the NEXT DAY. So my mother's birthday is, say, February 23rd, it shows up on the 24th, even though the contact record clearly shows the 23rd. That I can live with. It is correct in later years, so there must be a leap second in there somewhere throwing things off :-)

The inability to turn off / disable / hide "Local" contacts and "Local" calendar is going to be a problem for adding new contacts (just be careful to select the correct contact list before you make the change, or at least be prepared to copy / delete the contact after the fact) but it's a lot less aggravating for me, and it did expose what I think are areas where improvements could be made. If you're adding a NEW contact that doesn't exist at all, you can choose which contact list to which it will be added... but trying to add FIELDS to existing Linked contacts is a hassle (a safe process is described below, but in short DO NOT EDIT LINKED CONTACTS UNLESS YOU WANT UNSYNCED LOCAL CONTACTS CRAP TO HAPPEN!)

EDIT: some more notes: Gmail does let you put contacts into groups, but each gmail account can apparently only have one "contact list" which shows up in BlackBerry as a single large list: if you want to organize your contacts in a more granular manner, not just by the email address they're associated with... well, I haven't figured out an effective way to do that yet, but I'm still trying, but I think I'll have to create a class of contacts that aren't synced through Google... perhaps a direct sync between Thunderbird (contacts saved in various address books on my desktop PC) and BB10 will present itself...

EDIT: so I downloaded all my contacts from Google as CSV files for cleanup: I was surprised to see so many phonenumbers in the "Email 3 Value" field: I normalized them and moved them over to the Phone Number fields, but now I have to deal with the idea of reimporting all the data back into GMail and then dealing with duplicates etc... that is fraught with peril I think, but I don't see what choice there is: Google Contact's web interface is terrible for performing actions on multiple contact entries at the same time, and the new "Web 3.0" version is even worse. How do so many Android users rely on this crap is beyond me.

I imported my contacts from the CSV file (after thorough review and cleanup) and here's how I did it:

First, on my desktop computer from the browser-based Gmail contacts interface, I made a new "group" called "Legacy". I then moved all current contacts to that group (by selecting all the contacts and adding them to the "Legacy" group, then removing them from all other groups including "My Contacts")

Then I imported the CSV file: it was great seeing all those contact entries having all the fields filled in consistently: again, I did a lot of cleanup work by downloading the .CSV files and editing them in OpenOffice Calc: nothing happens automatically here, folks!

After reviewing them and confirming their quality, I went ahead and deleted all the contacts from the "legacy" account in Gmail.

Then I went into my BlackBerry and actually REMOVED the "Contacts" account for my gmail accounts; by rights this should remove any Gmail contacts, which it did. I did NOT remove the Gmail "Calendar" and "Email" accounts, just the "Contacts"

Then I went in and added the gmail accounts again: BB10 didn't add a duplicate account for the Calendar and Email, just readded the contacts.

The contacts looked correct to me for each of my GMail accounts.

Then I turned on my Linked In, Twitter, Facebook contacts again, and let BlackBerry run wild on linking them again. That all seemed to go pretty well, too. Some false negatives (I had to link them manually) but otherwise, all OK.

If you have no interest in linking your contact records from various sources, you won't succumb to the following problem, but I DO appreciate that feature of BB10 (linking the facebook / twitter / gmail / linked in contacts for individuals into a single "entry") but once linked together, any editorial changes you make to a contact record are saved in LOCAL CONTACTS. BAD, BlackBerry 10 OS.... BAD. NO. NO!

Now, some of my most important contacts (family members) had missing contact information: a holdout for the "Local Contacts" misfeatures. So when I tried to just add back in their phone number or whatnot, I noticed a new "Link" on their contact record: LOCAL CONTACTS again!

I had to figure out how to get around it... and it takes a lot of steps but it can be done (and it's not as simple as just choosing an address book before you edit a contact). It depends on whether the field you want to edit exists or not already, and if so, whether or not it is in an editable "contact list" (I don't think you can edit your FRIENDS facebook page, so you'd have to establish a new contact in an editable list). Also, it depends if the field you want to edit or add exists in one of the linked contact records or not. So, if the field exists in an editable linked contact record, you can unlink the contact record, edit the data, and re-link it... or you may have to access a single contact list, create a New record with the specifics for that contact, and then link that new contact in with the rest.

This is annoying, but important to know: do NOT add fields by editing a linked contact or the data WILL End up in "local contacts". I was trying to add my sister's phone number and it ended up as a linked local contact. I had to do the following:
- pick from the Action Tab Overflow Menu the contact list you want to hold the data: I chose a Gmail contact list.
- Create a new contact and observe that the contact list at the top is the desired one.
- if the field you want to add isn't on screen, click the 'add field' button and enter the data.
- enter the contact name as it matches the existing contact.
- save the contact
- choose "All" from the Action Tab Overflow menu. The new contact should appear adjacent to the existing linked contact.
- manually link the contact.

Alternatively edit the contact on the Browser-based synced (Gmail) contact and forego any attempt to edit linked contacts.

Suppose you want to add a field to an existing contact that is linked to multiple sources. First, decide which of the multiple linked records you'd prefer to have that new field data integrated with. For example, I wanted to add my nephew's birthday to his contact, but it was linked with his Linked In and Facebook and possibly work email. If I just added the field, there'd be some mysterious "Local Contacts" contact shenanigans going on, and that field wouldn't be added to any "synced" contact record.

SO you first have to Edit the contact, then press "Links": it will show you all the different contact sources. Choose the one you specifically want to add the field to. Press the "UNLINK" button and don't forget to press the SAVE button. Now you can go edit the unlinked contact and the field you add will be synced with that contact list.

Now from within the contact you're editing, press "LINK" and go link it back to the other contact and the multiple contacts will all be linked again.

In short, DO NOT EDIT LINKED CONTACTS AT ALL UNLESS YOU WANT BCURS ("BlackBerry Contacts Uncontrollable Rage Syndrome").

I am simply appalled by the default behaviour of creating a new "Local Contact" silently where one doesn't exist and having no choice in the UX as to where the new data should reside. Another reason why there simply has to be a way to totally disable "Local Contacts" and / or on a contact screen you must be able to select the subset of data you want to edit from the many linked contacts, edit the data for a particular data source, and save that data back to its source and thereby update the contact via its links... NOT saving one data field to 'local contacts'. This local contacts implementation is so horribly wrong and the potential for data loss and just user confusion is so great that I'm disgusted it has been allowed to work this way for this long. The way it works is not reasonable or helpful or convenient: it is simply terrible and wrong.

What do you mean by the leftmost button in the bottom bar? I have the latest OS and don't see any such button in Contacts app.

Posted via CB10

[Joshu42]

What do you mean by the leftmost button in the bottom bar?

He means the "hamburger" icon :


Which let you select the Contacts list to display :

[adamchambers]

Thanks for posting this. I often thought I was the only one who experienced significant problems with the contact management system.

I'm a blackberry shareholder and general supporter. However, reading this post I'm left thinking

"Why do you need to do so much manual work to get this to a state even yourself admit isn't perfect?"

I enjoy messing around with technology as much as the next person, but at a point it becomes frustrating that normal functionality and common sense doesn't prevail and consumers are left with additional headaches.



Posted via CB10

[RyanGermann]

So the million-dollar question is - IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE BOTH GMAIL PERSONAL & BUSINESS CONTACTS SYNC'D CONTINUALLY, WHILE KEEPING THEM SEPARATE.

If you are willing to maintain two separate GMAIL accounts, one for personal, one for business, it will work fine. I tend not to have the a given contact in both personal and business... but do link contact in my synced Gmail contact lists with respective BBM, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I enjoy messing around with technology as much as the next person, but at a point it becomes frustrating that normal functionality and common sense doesn't prevail and consumers are left with additional headaches.

The right way for this to work (IMO) is to make it very obvious which of the linked entries will get any changes to the linked contact should you edit it: if click the edit button on a contact it would be great if a little colour coded legend appeared that showed me which of the linked sources the data field was in. If I add a new field it should be obvious to which single linked contact the data will be added, and the "Local Contact" zombie record would NEVER be where I'd want it stored. That may be how it does work with the latest updates in 10.3.2, but I'm not sure... so when I want to add a field or edit one, I go unlink the contact first, make my edits, then link them again, so I'm sure where the edits were made.

[TSY-CB]

[QUOTE=RyanGermann;11958186]If you are willing to maintain two separate GMAIL accounts, one for personal, one for business, it will work fine. I tend not to have the a given contact in both personal and business... but do link contact in my synced Gmail contact lists with respective BBM, Facebook and Twitter accounts.


Yeah, the problem is my firm uses outlook exchange, through an off-site provider. So I'm kinda stuck w having both outlook & Gmail - which is what I believe is the crux of the issue

SQC100-3 | 10.3.2.858

[TSY-CB]

Facebook and linkedin contacts are just lists from those web services that are grabbed by the contact app just like contact lists from the email services. They need to be linked together most of the time.

Turns out I lied to you. The two seperate accounts don't sync together automatically.
I went through and made a fake contact list to see what would happen and had two separate email services syncing contacts. They did not merge or flake out in any way. I can create a new contact to one or both without any duplicates as it links automatically. If I delete without unlinking it deletes from both. If I delete after unlinking the other is still saved.

When you first setup your accounts you will have some odd behavior. If you have both contact lists with the same contacts you will get duplicates until you manually link them together. And then you might get duplicate entries. So using the same contact on both lists isn't ideal unless they are new contacts added after the accounts are in place. But still not ideal.


BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

Agreed. Having the same contact on both lists utterly defeats the point of having two separate lists.....the goal remains the same - simply put, to separate my business "life" from my "non-existent" personal life - the latter being a cross borne by most architects.

The problem now is, regardless of how I move forward, I already have 6 versions of the same contact, on each list, totaling 12 duplicates on my Classic's contact app.......with about just under a thousand real contacts on each list, this is a clusterf*** of epic proportions.

Any solution will still require these list be individually sorted out, and sanitized, prior to actually re-establishing the accounts on a wiped Classic

[qabb]

Thanks! That's some good info.

Posted via CB10

[bb10adopter111]

Very helpful post. Thank you!

It seems pretty clear that the original development of BB Contacts was conceptually faulty. The decision was made to sync contacts with multiple services (Good decision, IMO), but the technical requirements for this approach were given short shrift. Coming up with a proper data exchange schema and protocols for multiple 3rd party services requires a more complex strategy than Blackberry employed, and using "local contacts" as a default for any new data that may not sync properly with one or more of the other data sources is a problematic solution, because it creates a new "version" of the contact which cannot by synchronized with the various 3rd party sources.

I think a more robust solution might have required BB maintaining separate metadata about the database schema for each of the synced 3rd party services so that contacts would know how to sync correctly, and even create fields where possible in the "database of record" for each contact.

This was obviously out of scope for the Contacts App development, but I suspect that the issue was raised (and probably dismissed due to lack of resources, probably time or staff, back in 20012-13)

[TSY-CB]

First off, thank you Mr German, for the immense amount of research & work put into this. I have to admit that when I first pinged in, I'd not read the OP in it's entirety. Now that I have, it'll still take a bit to wrap my head round all of it.......I've yet to solve my contact smoothie issue, but am about to run an autoloader for the first time in a while, as I've been "blitzing" happily for the last few updates......now that I mention it **smacks forehead multiple times**, the contact issue began with my first blitz leak install. Too late now, the smoothies are all consuming....in an effort to keep focus on specifics, as brevity cleary isn't my forte, I'll cite only portions I have questions to...currently......

The whole "Local" thing.

....not even gonna go there

The idea that something called "Local" contacts and calendar exist but aren't discretely available for interaction is an oversight in the UI. The understanding that "Local" contacts are logically not synced to an external source like Gmail contacts or Outlook contacts may be unclear (my experience is with Gmail contacts)

one of the root causes....as aptly explained

As I said I'd been using Gmail contacts, one big bag of a list for all my contacts... but they did get messed up somehow along the way possibly by improper auto linking on BB10... but a mess is just an opportunity to clean up, so I got to it. The first thing I did was I unlink all my contacts: I just closed my eyes and did it, dreading how many possible octuplcate entries there might be. Turns out it wasn't too bad, but if I recall how many times I manually relinked all my extended family contact entries from Facebook and Linked in and all their email addresses oi, it could have been worse.

don't think I've ever linked my contacts, at least not in awareness of doing so, much less intentionally. Don't believe FB, LI are that much of a spanner - primarily b/c their contact field structure is borne of social media. Active Exchange Outlook account has a very business-centric contact field structure, that links into the calendar - simply put, it's for us working peeps, at all process levels from meeting invites, updates, agendas, controlled attendees lists, all of which can be modified on the fly, post meeting set-up, from your BB10 device. Gmail, on the other hand, appears to straddle the two paradigms of social contacts & business contacts, in a sort of loosey-goosey, let's all drink some cool-aid way. And I think, it is HERE that the primary disconnect when trying to have both Outlook & Gmail simultaneously sync'd

I also established a separate contact list for my professional contacts: everything that I'd use my real name for, like business meetings, medical services, banking, etc. Making my master contact list my "personal" email that I use when signing up for services that I don't want to have my credentials was not a mistake: the mistake was not having a SEPARATE contact list.

here's where I really wanna zero in on ..... "SEPARATE CONTACT LIST" - in Gmail? Please clarify..

I should note here that my optimal setup is to have my firm's active exchange live sync'd - contacts, tasks, calendars, the whole nine. But on Gmail, all I want is, well, the email, and the contacts. I don't use gmail calendar, as my personal calendar, mum's b'day etc, is the LOCAL calendar......IS THAT MY MISTAKE?. Because here's the rub, now when faced with an autoloader, I might lose carefully nursed personal calendar. Backing up using "Devise Settings, Local Contacts/Calendar" has long been a "DON'T DON'T DON'T. But how else can I extract the local calendar into a restorable form?

After creating the separate contact list

...how.....?

Note that if you have a lot of calendar entries tied to specific contacts in this manner, well, that's even more hassle to clean up, but I think it's worth the effort. So I switch to my Calendar and look for days with appointments Wherever there's an appointment with a contact, I just delete the contact info from the appointment. The alternative is that I have to send the contact an email. I can't add someone to an appointment WITHOUT sending them an email. I think BlackBerry should make it optional whether or not to send an email when you include a contact that has an email address in an appointment: or at least provide the means to override it by choosing "add contact to appointment but don't notify"... something like that... but that's not the way it works so unless you want to send an email to the contact to whom you have already sent an email (which may be undesirable for one reason or another) just delete the contact info from the appointment and hope they show up when you do. So, since I was willing to just remove contacts entries from appointments records rather than add them back in (because it's important I know about the appointment, not specifically who is also involved) I'm able to work with this. If you MUST include your contacts in your appointments, then you will either have to allow BB10 to notify them again, or not completely move the contact until the last appointment with which they are associated is passed.

...this whole contact + appointment has me a little baffled.....could you enlighten a severely overworked brain, please?

DO NOT EDIT LINKED CONTACTS UNLESS YOU WANT UNSYNCED LOCAL CONTACTS CRAP TO HAPPEN!

....again, not even gonna there

EDIT: so I downloaded all my contacts from Google as CSV files for cleanup

Can you elaborate on CSV editing.....I've not explored that. Presume it's similar to xml, and is easily editable off-line. Step-by-step w software would be very appreciated.

I imported my contacts from the CSV file (after thorough review and cleanup) and here's how I did it:

First, on my desktop computer from the browser-based Gmail contacts interface, I made a new "group" called "Legacy". I then moved all current contacts to that group (by selecting all the contacts and adding them to the "Legacy" group, then removing them from all other groups including "My Contacts") Then I imported the CSV file: it was great seeing all those contact entries having all the fields filled in consistently: again, I did a lot of cleanup work by downloading the .CSV files and editing them in OpenOffice Calc: nothing happens automatically here, folks! After reviewing them and confirming their quality, I went ahead and deleted all the contacts from the "legacy" account in Gmail.

This REALLY the only way??

Then I went into my BlackBerry and actually REMOVED the "Contacts" account for my gmail accounts; by rights this should remove any Gmail contacts, which it did. I did NOT remove the Gmail "Calendar" and "Email" accounts, just the "Contacts" Then I went in and added the gmail accounts again: BB10 didn't add a duplicate account for the Calendar and Email, just re-added the contacts. The contacts looked correct to me for each of my GMail accounts. Then I turned on my Linked In, Twitter, Facebook contacts again, and let BlackBerry run wild on linking them again. That all seemed to go pretty well, too. Some false negatives (I had to link them manually) but otherwise, all OK.

This all seems to make sense.....

once linked together, any editorial changes you make to a contact record are saved in LOCAL CONTACTS. BAD, BlackBerry 10 OS.... BAD. NO. NO!

Clewley, are you listening? Please please please.....?

DO NOT EDIT LINKED CONTACTS AT ALL UNLESS YOU WANT BCURS ("BlackBerry Contacts Uncontrollable Rage Syndrome").

+1E69

Such a detailed on point piece of research & documentation demands a an equally detailed review and similarly focused questions/responses.

I await your response, sir. As I mentioned at the start, I'm about to autoload this b**** but have too many things, like my CAMCARD records, mu local calendar etc, that I need be assured can be backed up, without other conflict causing things, like setting

VZW Classic | 10.3.2.2789

[RyanGermann]

This was the last sentence in this post, but I'll move it to the top because it is the 'summation' of much of the general warnings I lay out below:

The key was first unlinking everything, then investing the time in cleanup / normalizing the data for the contacts lists over which I have full read-write capability, and of course simply avoiding editing contacts that have been linked. If I want to EDIT a contact, I UNLINK THE CONTACT FIRST. I go into the contact and UNLINK the specific source contact I want to edit: for example, if a contact has a Twitter, Facebook, Gmail and Linked In contact, and I want to add a phone number, I will go to the contact record, click on the "Links" button on the Action bar, then it will list all the contact records that are linked, then I press "unlink" next to the Gmail one, then exit that contact, and then in the contact list there is a separate entry for the now unlinked Gmail contact, I go into that contact record, edit it, save the edits, then from there I can press the "Link" button and link back to the other "linked" record having all four linked again. Thankfully I don't edit contacts that much... also if I want, I can just access the contact record directly via Web browser to www.gmail.com and edit it there, and the changes will sync directly to the already-linked contact, but not create a local contact record inadvertently.

here's where I really wanna zero in on ..... "SEPARATE CONTACT LIST" - in Gmail? Please clarify..

Establish a separate gmail account for your "personal" and "professional" contacts. Two GMail accounts (effectively, two accounts on services to which you can sync your contacts list... my sister uses Outlook.com effectively).

You can't have to separate email lists on Gmail, just tags are used to filter "views" of a single contact list, and I don't think that BB10 or most other local Contacts apps that sync with online contacts like Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook will respect or utilize those tags to create what could, in BB10 contacts, be presented as separate lists... like instead of a category called "GMail", it could use "GMail:{tag}" to make distinct local contacts categories from a single Gmail contact list... but that's not how it works.

I should note here that my optimal setup is to have my firm's active exchange live sync'd - contacts, tasks, calendars, the whole nine. But on Gmail, all I want is, well, the email, and the contacts. I don't use gmail calendar, as my personal calendar, mum's b'day etc, is the LOCAL calendar......IS THAT MY MISTAKE?.

Mistake? no... Choice? yes. I want my calendar available on all my devices, so I elect to use my Gmail calendar... but because I have both "personal" and "professional" Gmail accounts, I also have separate contacts and calendars. Logically, if you are going to make a calendar entry with contacts from your "personal" contacts list, you should be sure to create that calendar item in your "personal" calendar.

If you don't want to sync or back-up your local Calendar other than via a Link backup via USB, then you don't have to use the Gmail calendar.

Because here's the rub, now when faced with an autoloader, I might lose carefully nursed personal calendar. Backing up using "Devise Settings, Local Contacts/Calendar" has long been a "DON'T DON'T DON'T. But how else can I extract the local calendar into a restorable form?

Hmmm... the exercise of converting a local calendar item to a remote one? Perhaps when you edit a local calendar item, you can choose from the dropdown list which calendar to store the edited event in? Again, I'm not familiar with local calendar so I don't have much advice to give on that.

...this whole contact + appointment has me a little baffled.....could you enlighten a severely overworked brain, please?

Not sure what kind of detail you need, but when you set up an appointment in your Calendar, you can choose contacts to notify of the appointment. I personally want the ability to include a contact in the appointment but NOT email them any kind of notification (like my physician wants an email from me asking them to "accept" my appointment!) but since BB10 Calendar doesn't let you opt out of sending an email to anyone you've included in a meeting that has an email address, I just have to avoid adding people to meetings. For an MS Exchange Contacts / Calendar for work, where you actually DO want to be able to set meetings and send notification emails, this should be a very helpful feature.

Can you elaborate on CSV editing.....I've not explored that. Presume it's similar to xml, and is easily editable off-line. Step-by-step w software would be very appreciated.

If you're not comfortable with downloading a CSV file, importing it into Excel and doing "data normalization" (getting rid of duplicates, correcting spelling, making addresses and phone numbers consistent vis a vis punctuation, dashes, etc) then this probably isn't something you want to undertake.

You have to go to the Contact or Calendar on www.gmail.com in your Web browser and choose the "export" feature. Google offers help on this... choose "CSV for Excel" which will make it suitable for editing in a spreadsheet.

Once you've got the list downloaded and have given it a look in Excel to confirm that all your contacts are there, you can then go to your contacts list on Google and wipe it all out. Yes, that is scary, but you just downloaded all the contacts so you have a backup. MAKE A COPY OF THAT FILE.

Then, normalize the data and choose the "Import" feature to bring your contacts in from the spreadsheet.

You'll recall that I unlinked all my contacts on my BB10 device first... so when you have deleted all the old and have brought these cleaned-up ones into your gmail contacts list, they will sync back to your BB10 device and you'll only have the "clean" contacts in that contact list.

Such a detailed on point piece of research & documentation demands a an equally detailed review and similarly focused questions/responses.

I await your response, sir. As I mentioned at the start, I'm about to autoload this b**** but have too many things, like my CAMCARD records, mu local calendar etc, that I need be assured can be backed up, without other conflict causing things, like setting[/QUOTE]

I reiterate: my desired result was to sync my contacts ONLY with a online service and NOT to have any local contacts. I've got full read-write control over my contacts list (which you may not have if you're reading from a corporate Active Directory etc.) so I'm not really sure what to suggest when contacts that are managed at the corporate level are involved... but I wager they behave much like Linked In or Facebook or Twitter contact info: I don't have write access to those records either: they're contacts in my contacts list, but I can't go and change the information in those contacts.

[bb10adopter111]

This is one of the best threads I've read on CB forums. It's really helped me understand why the behavior of the BlackBerry Contacts app is so complicated and has made it easy for me to regain control of my contacts' information.

As someone who has written technical requirements for systems that combine multi-variate data from competing sources, it seems clear to me that BlackBerry simply bit off more than it could chew trying to unify Contact information from so many sources. I wonder whether or not Android has a better solution to unified contact management or if other platforms simply avoid trying to unify the data.

It would have been easy for BlackBerry to simply include a one-direction sync from sources to the local contacts database, and that would have eliminated most of the difficulties. The fact that they tried to engineer both bi-directional synchronization with multiple sources AND contact linking is the source of all the complexity. I think they would have had to create a much more detailed set of data-handling options to pull it off.

Posted via CB10

[TSY-CB]

unlinking everything, then investing the time in cleanup / normalizing the data for the contacts lists over which I have full read-write capability

re: linked contacts - the process of editng by unlinking the contact from list you wish to add a field to is easily understood. I'd figured that out myself, a good while back, though it took me a bit, and still lead to the inevitable "head slaps", and teeth-gnashing

Establish a separate gmail account for your "personal" and "professional" contacts. Two GMail accounts (effectively, two accounts on services to which you can sync your contacts list... my sister uses Outlook.com effectively).

Just my firm's active exchange outlook, which yes, I have full read/write access to. It's the gmail that's bollocking things up.

You can't have to separate email lists on Gmail, just tags are used to filter "views" of a single contact list, and I don't think that BB10 or most other local Contacts apps that sync with online contacts like Gmail or Yahoo or Outlook will respect or utilize those tags to create what could, in BB10 contacts, be presented as separate lists... like instead of a category called "GMail", it could use "GMail:{tag}" to make distinct local contacts categories from a single Gmail contact list... but that's not how it works.

This is because gmail's inherent database schema (to steal a phrase) was set up on the premise of a social / personal / general email system. Hence no provision for compartmentalization within said schema. On the business end of things, compartmentalization is mission-critical to the business. Can anyone say BES? Outlook is also built on the same concept of separate lists / tasks / contact groups etc. RIM just took, in what I think was an unintended evolution by using BBM over BES for way faster, more fluid workflow.

For an MS Exchange Contacts / Calendar for work, where you actually DO want to be able to set meetings and send notification emails, this should be a very helpful feature.

Aptly demonstrating why this is so important - I am on the road a lot, and use my BB to set up meetings, update attendees & send agenda's & material to be reviewed. The data transference itself is sync'd across my three devices - desktop, laptop, Q20 via BOXsync.

If you don't want to sync or back-up your local Calendar other than via a Link backup via USB, then you don't have to use the Gmail calendar. Hmmm... the exercise of converting a local calendar item to a remote one? Perhaps when you edit a local calendar item, you can choose from the dropdown list which calendar to store the edited event in? Again, I'm not familiar with local calendar so I don't have much advice to give on that.

UPDATE re: my efforts today - autoloaded 2789, and began fr scratch. Prior to this, I create, via Link, separate backups - one full, one settings/local contactc & calendar. The latter was to get my local calendar backed up, with as little encumbrance as possible. This is where it got odd. After the first autoload, I restored a backup just prior to my fist blitz leak. That went fine, and and I disconnected all my accounts, making sure nothing was in either Local or Sim or SD contact lists. Once I setup the active exchange outlook account, the contact list duly updated to match. At this point, I realized that I'd not restore the calendar specific back up. So I autoloaded again, and restored the calendar backup. Worked as advertised. BUT NOW, when I setup the outlook account, contacts stopped being sync'd after only 45% of them were in. Same state 6

If you're not comfortable with downloading a CSV file, importing it into Excel and doing "data normalization" (getting rid of duplicates, correcting spelling, making addresses and phone numbers consistent vis a vis punctuation, dashes, etc) then this probably isn't something you want to undertake.

You have to go to the Contact or Calendar on www.gmail.com in your Web browser and choose the "export" feature. Google offers help on this... choose "CSV for Excel" which will make it suitable for editing in a spreadsheet.

Once you've got the list downloaded and have given it a look in Excel to confirm that all your contacts are there, you can then go to your contacts list on Google and wipe it all out. Yes, that is scary, but you just downloaded all the contacts so you have a backup. MAKE A COPY OF THAT FILE.

Then, normalize the data and choose the "Import" feature to bring your contacts in from the spreadsheet.

You'll recall that I unlinked all my contacts on my BB10 device first... so when you have deleted all the old and have brought these cleaned-up ones into your gmail contacts list, they will sync back to your BB10 device and you'll only have the "clean" contacts in that contact list.

This I have no issue with, being familiar with both xls & csv formats. Just wanted to know exactly how you did it.

EDIT: forget the google sync question - wasn't even aware that it existed, much less that it was cancelled.

[TSY-CB]

If you're not comfortable with downloading a CSV file, importing it into Excel and doing "data normalization" (getting rid of duplicates, correcting spelling, making addresses and phone numbers consistent vis a vis punctuation, dashes, etc) then this probably isn't something you want to undertake.

You have to go to the Contact or Calendar on www.gmail.com in your Web browser and choose the "export" feature. Google offers help on this... choose "CSV for Excel" which will make it suitable for editing in a spreadsheet.

Once you've got the list downloaded and have given it a look in Excel to confirm that all your contacts are there, you can then go to your contacts list on Google and wipe it all out. Yes, that is scary, but you just downloaded all the contacts so you have a backup. MAKE A COPY OF THAT FILE.

Then, normalize the data and choose the "Import" feature to bring your contacts in from the spreadsheet.

You'll recall that I unlinked all my contacts on my BB10 device first... so when you have deleted all the old and have brought these cleaned-up ones into your gmail contacts list, they will sync back to your BB10 device and you'll only have the "clean" contacts in that contact list.

Turns out I lied - csv files, when queried about in google help - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12119?hl=en
- seem utterly simple.....column by field, entry by row, etc. Well, I just exported my google contacts into a csv, opened it in excel, then found that there all field descriptors sat in one cell - A1, and all field entries for some contacts sat in one cell - A3. Other contacts separate fields by row, but not singly - as in name, birthday in one row, street address & city in hte next, and the rest, including brithdays, in yet another row....mind you, one consistency is that all the rows had the data in column 1......still more perplexing.......some contact rows, of varying no. of fields, had varying lengths of commas , and colons : btwn them.

See attached screenshots........

descriptor fields in cell A1


contact info in one row, and yes, all in the first cell A3


contact in multiple rows, again in the 1st cell of each row



I consider myself fairly competent, both analytically & logically.....but even Spock would have issues w this.......


EDIT: tried exporting in Outlook csv format and all seems normal,,,,,,ish

[RyanGermann]

EDIT: tried exporting in Outlook csv format and all seems normal,,,,,,ish

Examine the file in a text editor before importing into Excel to suss out the field separator and delimiter first... I think you can specify what character to use in the Export page.

That looks like simple comma separated with no delimiter, except some records seem to have line endings in fields... Clean them up in a text editor first by splitting those fields into separate fields.

[TSY-CB]

So, just the latest update - normalized csv file uploaded into my emptied gmail contacts....then linked into my Classic, successfully. So as of about 9-odd days ago, both work's outlook & personal gmail contact lists, unlinked mind you, were fine........until yesterday - I tried to call a contact from my, yes you guessed it, gmail contacts to find it had (a) triplicated itself, and (b) had absolutely no info besides the name on all three copies.........even more bizarre was some contacts duplicated, some quadruplicated....some retained all contact info on one copy, some none, some two out of four would be blank, besides the name......

Now, this I know for sure, it's BB10's contact app itself - my gmail contacts online is intact, same number of contacts as the csv file. Work's outlook list on BB10's contact app looks intact too.....as does the actual outlook account.....so it would appear to be a completely localized "trip down the rabbit hole" that only my gmail contact list in BB10's contact app took.......

I'd simply LOVE to hear what anyone can make of this. Sometime this weekend, I will delete the gmail CardDav account, and re-create it....

Is it possible to sideload a contact app from a diff OS version? Anyone know if that will work? I'm currently on 10.3.2.2789, autoloaded so the phone was fully wiped, and re-setup fr scratch.......

Thoughts, anyone???

UPDATE 11/31 - re-linked my gmail contact list today......tested "adding a contact" specifically to that list, and nothing happened. So....I've changed the account's sync status to manual, and figure I'll have to live w it. Maybe next week, I'll re-activate the sync, add a contact and see if **** blows up again.

Curiously enough, I use this rather well-known app call CamCard, take a phtoto of a business card, and 96~98% accuracy on the OCR makes it livable......the BB10 version of it is quite anemic, but does seem to have a better, I'll call it a relationship, with BB10 contacts app, but there's one dealkiller on it - the original Android version stores all the card contacts in it's servers......which I only found out after I'd wiped the device for a full restore. Which, having been constantly used over 20 mths lost me a fair amount of contacts. After a serious email exchange w the developer, they upgraded me free to the Android Pro version. Which does as advertised. But, as you'd guess, doesn't quite play too well w BB10 contacts. When you finish the process of photographing the card, and checking the OCR on all the fields, you're offered an option when saving - contacts, gmail or both. Today, w gmail's sync off (manual), I chose Contacts. Now here's the damndest thing.....it shows up under "ALL", but not in any of the contact accounts, not local, not sim, not SD, not office outlook, not LinkedIn, not Facebook. Just under ALL......so now I'ma start another email convo w the developer, SigInt, to find out what's what.

Watch this space......

[DickStarrbuck]

Replying

Posted via CB10

[TSY-CB]

So, just the latest update - normalized csv file uploaded into my emptied gmail contacts....then linked into my Classic, successfully. So as of about 9-odd days ago, both work's outlook & personal gmail contact lists, unlinked mind you, were fine........until yesterday - I tried to call a contact from my, yes you guessed it, gmail contacts to find it had (a) triplicated itself, and (b) had absolutely no info besides the name on all three copies.........even more bizarre was some contacts duplicated, some quadruplicated....some retained all contact info on one copy, some none, some two out of four would be blank, besides the name......

Now, this I know for sure, it's BB10's contact app itself - my gmail contacts online is intact, same number of contacts as the csv file. Work's outlook list on BB10's contact app looks intact too.....as does the actual outlook account.....so it would appear to be a completely localized "trip down the rabbit hole" that only my gmail contact list in BB10's contact app took.......

I'd simply LOVE to hear what anyone can make of this. Sometime this weekend, I will delete the gmail CardDav account, and re-create it....

Is it possible to sideload a contact app from a diff OS version? Anyone know if that will work? I'm currently on 10.3.2.2789, autoloaded so the phone was fully wiped, and re-setup fr scratch.......

Thoughts, anyone???

UPDATE 11/31 - re-linked my gmail contact list today......tested "adding a contact" specifically to that list, and nothing happened. So....I've changed the account's sync status to manual, and figure I'll have to live w it. Maybe next week, I'll re-activate the sync, add a contact and see if **** blows up again.

Curiously enough, I use this rather well-known app call CamCard, take a phtoto of a business card, and 96~98% accuracy on the OCR makes it livable......the BB10 version of it is quite anemic, but does seem to have a better, I'll call it a relationship, with BB10 contacts app, but there's one dealkiller on it - the original Android version stores all the card contacts in it's servers......which I only found out after I'd wiped the device for a full restore. Which, having been constantly used over 20 mths lost me a fair amount of contacts. After a serious email exchange w the developer, they upgraded me free to the Android Pro version. Which does as advertised. But, as you'd guess, doesn't quite play too well w BB10 contacts. When you finish the process of photographing the card, and checking the OCR on all the fields, you're offered an option when saving - contacts, gmail or both. Today, w gmail's sync off (manual), I chose Contacts. Now here's the damndest thing.....it shows up under "ALL", but not in any of the contact accounts, not local, not sim, not SD, not office outlook, not LinkedIn, not Facebook. Just under ALL......so now I'ma start another email convo w the developer, SigInt, to find out what's what.

Watch this space......

UPDATE Feb 27, 2016 - so, after a small security scare, I changed the password on my gmail account. As I'd been cruisin' happily for about 3 mths w. gmail carddav in [U]manual[U] sync mode, I only clue-in *head smack* that I couldn't even change sync mode to add a contact as the password had changed. All efforts to re-enter / change the gmail carddave account on my Q20, I gave up and deleted the account, and re-loaded it. All was good for about a week or so, then the duplicate spawning started, as I'd left the account on auto-sync. Deleted, and reloaded the account, same deal. Now I've got to remember to change sync mode. Particularly frustrating as gmail contacts updates "periodically" according to it's own apparent notions......I have to reboot the phone sequencially 3~4 times w. at least a few hours in between to get the contacts app to show all 760 contacts. And then remember to change to manual sync before it spawns again.

This contact app is becoming a major problem, particularly as BB10, and BBOS before it, had a major feature set that other mobile OS's didn't, which was the seamless ability to handle multiple contact, calendar & email accounts, all "sandboxed" from one another, or if one chose to, all linked. Well, this issue w BB10's contact app & gmail is causing a severe crimp in that. Then I recall how it seems impossible to get GooglePlay Services running on BB10, and a little light bulb goes off...........