How I learned to hate BlackBerry 10 Contacts and Calendar less

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.

This is a LOT of work. Thank you for taking the time to figure this out and most importantly to post it

I'll soon be going through the same thing trying to simplify my contacts. I'll let you all know if it turns out well.

Posted via CB10

I did something similar a while back. I essentially keep my "work" contacts on Exchange at work, and all my personal contacts are on Gmail. I have no local contacts. In Gmail, I curate the contacts, add contact pictures, etc. etc. It was a lot of work getting it right initially, but since then, no hassle at all.

I found many of the same things you did regarding how contacts are handled.

I don't have a Gmail account, but I do have a work Exchange account. And having all my contacts synced from that account and not linked to anything else has been fairly trouble free.

It amazes me that "local" contacts are treated so differently. Why can't we just filter only the local contacts on the fly like you can every other account. No, you have to go into the "settings" and turn off all the other accounts if you want to see only your local accounts.

That's why I only have two local contacts. I keep them only as a test to see if things ever change with the contacts app with every new OS update.

Why we don't get options when setting up various accounts on what to do with potential associated contact lists also baffles me. Why does it assume we want our Facebook friends dumped into contacts whenever we log into the Facebook app, and why does it proceed to link any and all contacts between them that have even the smallest similarity. All to often, it links contacts with totally unrelated friends just because there's a name similarity. It's really bad when you have family members - a brother, father, uncles, cousins and even a son - that all share the same Chris, John or Michael somewhere mixed around in their first or middle names.

Back when I first got this BB10 phone, I was constantly unlinking contacts between my main list, and Facebook list.

Sure, you can turn off the Facebook list in contacts, but they still show up in the phone list - which, itself, is a pain.

Eventually, I just deleted Facebook altogether. It was a data hog on its own (even when not logged in), and I rarely actually used it anyway - didn't need to know every brain-fart my lovely family members have every day.

Going back to what started me on bringing up Facebook in the first place, I'm still waiting on the introduction of an option to allow or not allow the import of contacts from these other accounts when they are set up, and allow or not allow linking with other accounts upon import. As it is, it does ask if you want to sync contacts when setting up an Exchange account, why not do the same with every other account type that has similar contact lists.


Posted via CB10

That was a crap load of work you did op, from the BlackBerry contacts/calendar to the lengthy CB post.
*There should be a donate funds icon here lol*

This is what I have done...I'm lazy
Attachment 351651

Posted via CB10

Migrate your contacts to Outlook!

Pasaporte Pilipinas | SQW100-1/10.3.2.500 #NoGoingBack

This should be published as an article on the main site.

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

Right, you have to tweak all those features to your own convenience. Customization is the key to having a good settings and feel.

SihZou Z10

Originally Posted by jdesignz

Migrate your contacts to Outlook!

Pasaporte Pilipinas | SQW100-1/10.3.2.500 #NoGoingBack

How do we do this?

Posted from my Z30 on CB10

I've turned off Facebook and LinkedIn but many contacts are still linked to it. The problem I hate is having their phone numbers and email addresses duplicated and sometimes appear in Triplicate when I pull up the contact. Do we really need a text home or text work option in the calendar?

Posted from my Z30 on CB10

It is ironic that for a productivity device the design made the users jump through so many hoops to make things sane.

Posted via CB10

Originally Posted by mefretwell

This is a LOT of work. Thank you for taking the time to figure this out and most importantly to post it

I haven't quite "figured it all out" yet, but I will continue to modify the first post as I discover more things including any mistakes I might make: I haven't yet taken the big step of replacing out all my current Gmail contacts with the list that I downloaded, cleaned up and reorganized... that's the most scary possibly destructive step, and I need to be sure I have time to recover from catastrophe before I start... so watch this space to find out if my entire contact list collapsed in on itself, or if I've entered a new era of sublime contact management bliss. If this was Star Trek, a 2% chance of success would work out great, but alas, life isn't Star Trek (RIP Grace Lee Whitney!)

Helpful hint: NEVER edit a Linked contact on your BB10 device or via Blend unless you want zombie "Local Contacts". See notes in the first post: If you expect technology to work in a sensible and useful way, you won't expect the current behaviour, and you would therefore be subject to frustration and possible data loss.

BlackBerry: FIX YOUR S*IT.

Just wanted to add my experience. I never wanted to risk messing things up by trying such a major change. But a few times I've changed individual contact data for just one or two contacts. Sometimes it stays and other times not. Worst problem is after I had the forced update to 10.3.2.440 every other contact is listed twice! Even stranger is that a few are also doubled within the contract. I mean that I open one of the John Doe and it shows each type of phone number twice!

Getting very annoying! To paraphrase an earlier post, I use my BlackBerry to be MORE productive, not less!!

BlackBerry really needs to get the core functions to work correctly again soon! Calendar and being able to sync up with desktop versions (not cloud) of Outlook is an issue I see more and more posting about in the last few months.

Posted via CB10

I'm confused by one thing: considering how easy Universal Search is to use, why is it necessary to hyper-organize the data like this? Whatever you need to find is just a couple keystrokes away from the homescreen.

Posted via CB10 on Passport

My big complaint is that OS10 can't do something as simple as sync the Contact Groups or keep Calendar data beyond 29 days.



Posted via CB10

Originally Posted by BirdBruce

I'm confused by one thing: considering how easy Universal Search is to use, why is it necessary to hyper-organize the data like this? Whatever you need to find is just a couple keystrokes away from the homescreen.

Universal Search often returns false positives or false negatives. I just type right in my contacts list sometimes and contacts that should be presented aren't, etc.

I have most of my contacts linked to my MS Outlook contacts on my Windows Laptop via BlackBerry Link.

My Z30 is on OS 10.3.2.2252.

When I edit a field (such as an email address or a phone number) in a contact that is linked to BBM, twitter and Outlook, only the Outlook data is edited and no new local contact is created.

Posted via CB10

I pulled SIM card doing the OS updated. After updated and put back SIM card. Mine experienced the OS updated has been caused duplicate and deleted the contact. I do not synch the e.mail to local contacts. I'm not confident to BlackBerry contact management system.

Z10/STL100-2/2339

Amazingly detailed, thoroughly researched post, OP - kudos +1E8.

I may over generalizing but for me, the core issue remains - my business contact list in outlook resides in our active exchange server. I have a gmail personal contact list.

So the million-dollar question is - IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE BOTH GMAIL PERSONAL & BUSINESS CONTACTS SYNC'D CONTINUALLY, WHILE KEEPING THEM SEPARATE. Right now I have personal contacts in my office outlook contacts, and vice versa, not to mention the 3~5 duplicates on 75% of both lists.


Do forgive me if this has been solved, but I've pored through about 9 threads so far and still have not found a clean solution, as opposed to a jury-rigged rpocess.

HELP anyone, please?

TSc

Amazingly detailed, thoroughly researched post, OP - kudos +1E8.

I may over generalizing but for me, the core issue remains - my business contact list in outlook resides in our active exchange server, while my personal contacts are stored on gmail..

So the million-dollar question is - IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE BOTH GMAIL PERSONAL & BUSINESS CONTACTS SYNC'D CONTINUALLY, WHILE KEEPING THEM SEPARATE. Right now I have personal contacts in my office outlook contacts, and vice versa, not to mention the 3~5 duplicates on 75% of both lists.


Do forgive me if this has been solved, but I've pored through about 9 threads so far and still have not found a clean solution, as opposed to a jury-rigged rpocess.

HELP anyone, please?

TSc

Originally Posted by TSY#CB

So the million-dollar question is - IS IT POSSIBLE TO HAVE BOTH GMAIL PERSONAL & BUSINESS CONTACTS SYNC'D CONTINUALLY, WHILE KEEPING THEM SEPARATE. Right now I have personal contacts in my office outlook contacts, and vice versa, not to mention the 3~5 duplicates on 75% of both lists.

Since they would sync into each other no.
Only option would be to not sync, export and import them into their respective client when you make changes.

This is a free app that let's you save in CSV format which Gmail and outlook both use.
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webst...ntent/37102894


BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

Originally Posted by kgbbz10

Since they would sync into each other no.
Only option would be to not sync, export and import them into their respective client when you make changes.

This is a free app that let's you save in CSV format which Gmail and outlook both use.
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webst...ntent/37102894


BBClassic10.3.2.2639-799Radio

Odd that. When you manually add contacts, there's an option to pick which of your accounts it gets added to. So, it can clearly distinguish btwn them. But yet manages to scramble everything - I have numbers mixed w names, multiple "blank" entries, and random "number only" entries which likely related to the former.

If I'm OK w the two accounts cross-linking, does this mean I've got one combined one, but how does this affect other accounts like Facebook & LinkedIn? It's so incredibly frustrating, 'cos it's obvious that some provision is there for distinguishing btwn accounts. Wondering also if it's part of the legacy of not having old-school BES, and BB10 trying to accomplish similar functionality.

I'm on a VZW Classic - anyone know if the VZW "Cloud" can help solve this?

Or if I chose just one, either Outlook or Gmail, to be sync'd and not the other.....any way u slice it, it's still a major flaw.

SQC100-3 | 10.3.2.858

Originally Posted by TSY#CB

Odd that. When you manually add contacts, there's an option to pick which of your accounts it gets added to. So, it can clearly distinguish btwn them. But yet manages to scramble everything - I have numbers mixed w names, multiple "blank" entries, and random "number only" entries which likely related to the former.

If I'm OK w the two accounts cross-linking, does this mean I've got one combined one, but how does this affect other accounts like Facebook & LinkedIn? It's so incredibly frustrating, 'cos it's obvious that some provision is there for distinguishing btwn accounts. Wondering also if it's part of the legacy of not having old-school BES, and BB10 trying to accomplish similar functionality.

I'm on a VZW Classic - anyone know if the VZW "Cloud" can help solve this?

Or if I chose just one, either Outlook or Gmail, to be sync'd and not the other.....any way u slice it, it's still a major flaw.

SQC100-3 | 10.3.2.858

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