How do I get my contacts backed up?

I've had my Droid Razr M for a few years, and Backup Assistant Plus has been regularly doing its thing. I just assumed my contacts were getting backed up, too. Until today, when I went to Verizon Cloud online and found that there were no contacts for my account. So I went to Settings, then Backup Assistant Plus, and clicked "Sync Now." It said the backup was successful, but that 0 contacts were backed up. Then I opened Backup Assistant Plus on my phone, and in the list of content pending for backup, it says "You have no contacts on your device and Cloud." What?

I am using the stock contacts app that came with the phone, and I have a couple hundred contacts. I thought maybe I messed up a setting sometime in the last few years, but the contacts backup appears never to have worked, since there are zero contacts in my Cloud.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Accepted answers

Snn5

If you have a Google Account on the phone then your contacts are stored there. For Verizon to backup contacts it needs all the contacts to be stored under Phone and not Google. If you really want to use Verizon instead of Google for contact back ups, you will have to go to your contacts, tap menu and choose Contacts to Display and choose Google. Then you will have to export as csv file. Then, go back to contacts and choose Phone as the contacts to display and import the csv file. You can also export the google contacts from your Gmail on a PC browser and then save that file to the PC and load onto the phone in Downloads folder then go back to contacts screen and import.

All comments

jeffecohen

Having the same exact problem with my GS6. I also learned (the hard way) that Backup Assistant was not backing up the contacts on my old GS4. Fortunately, they were all backed up in my Google acct. Cloud backs up my photos and music just fine, but not contacts. Like jessicafm, I'm using the stock Samsung Contacts app and I've gone through the same steps she has.

Snn5

jessicafm

Amazing, this worked! Thanks so much, Snn5! For anyone else who's having this problem, here's exactly what I did, all from my phone...

Import/Export: I opened the People app, selected "Contacts to display" from the menu, and selected Google, at which point it showed me all my contacts. I selected "Import/export" from the menu, then "Export to storage." When the export was complete, I went back to "Contacts to display" and selected Backup Assistant Plus (Phone), at which point it showed no contacts. I selected "Import/export" from the menu, then "Import from storage," and all my contacts appeared.

Backup: From my home screen, I went to Settings-->Backup Assistant Plus-->Sync Now, and it backed up 381 contacts. However, when I logged into Verizon from my PC, they still didn't show up. So back on my phone, I viewed all my apps, opened Cloud, selected "Back Up All Now" from the dropdown menu, and then it showed that there were 381 contacts instead of "you have no contacts." This time when I went back to my PC, I was able to see them all online.

The added bonus to all this is that now Verizon Message+ on my PC shows my contact names instead of phone numbers! That's what I was hoping for, but I wasn't sure it would work.

Thanks again!

Snn5

Glad that worked :smileyhappy: