Contacts are Duplicating!!!

[beracing115]

New to the Droid world, and so I've had to go about moving over contacts from my old phone.  The rep at the Verizon store moved from my old BB Storm II, over to new phone.  I also have three emails, FB, and other social accounts, which the phone now has created duplicates all through my list. 

I'd did find on a couple of "my accounts", that I could uncheck contacts.  Yahoo email and Tango.  Can't seem to do that for my FB or my local internet provider account.  I've tried to join entries, but whatever I do, I guess its the backup assistant that syncs, just undoes all the work I've done. I did find on my Google account that I had to set up, a place to uncheck the contacts, so I did that, but still I'm just not sure where all the dupes keep finding their way back to my phone! 

I'm going to sync up to my work server this week, so now I'm afraid I'm only going to compound the issue even further!! 

HELP!!!  Is there a place online that I can go to clean the list up on this site and hopefully get sync to just look at my backup list?  What other choices do I have????  This is frustrating!! 

[beracing115]

Well.. An update....

I've some headway, but very little.  It seems I can "join" some entries, but not others...  THEN, after doing a few, I start getting an error message saying their was an error w/ the contact and could not save the join. 

This is really frustrating!! 

And...  When you use the backup assistant on your phone, does it not show up in your online account here?  I go to my backup area, and don't see any but my own personal contact info.  Nothing else! 

[AZSALUKI]

if you have sync'd your backup assistant account from your phone to your my verizon account, then they should all be there. 

it can get a bit confusing as android is powered by google and many of us export our "phone" contacts to our "google" contacts and just use our google account. when i did this i ended up with duplicates of everything. i am not familiar with motorola devices, but there is a way to "unsync" any account. if it's nowhere in your settings, then you can unsync the facebook contacts from inside of the facebook app somehow.... but most devices have an area in the setting to uncheck any account that has been sync'd (google, facebook, backup assistant, etc)

[beracing115]

I've ran the backup assistant on my phone, but I still don't see my contacts.  I thought if I could get to them online, de-dupe them, and sync back to the phone, it may work.. Not sure...

I've also started getting an error message when I've tried to join contacts to help get rid of duplicates.  It's like the whole contacts widget starts bogging down, and then says it can't join the contact info from the list.  I had to force close it a couple of times because of it...

Any more thoughts or suggestions????

[AZSALUKI]

don't know. for now i'm living with the duplicates. i exported all of my "phone's" (backup assistant) contacts to my google acount a while back and then sync'd google contacts to my phone, so my contacts are all duplicated. when i have time to go through and make sure ALL of them are in my google contacts (since i've added a few), i am planning on just deleting the phone's contacts and using google from now on. i've never tried to join them. 

[Wildman]

Try Importing all contacts to Google and then all you have to do is check the double entries and select delete..

1. Log into Verizon Backup Assistant
2. Click on Export to CSV
3. Save File as (or Rename to) Contacts (it should already be converted to CSV so including .csv is redundant)
4. Log into Gmail/Google Voice
5. Click on Contacts
6. Click on Import
7. Browse for the Contacts (.csv) file
8. Click Import

9. Disable BA by going to Settings / Applucations . Manage Applications / All Tab / Sync Service / Clear All

[B33]

Wildman if i do a Fr on my Inc. an save the contacts to the Sd card.  Export them to the Sd card.  cant i just import back to the phone or do i have to choose Google or B A . I was thinking i could just import them back.

[sf100]

I had some duplicates also and deleted them from my contact list on the phone. Some of those were people that I had "circled" in my google+ account, and the act of deleting the contact on the phone removed them from my circles.

[Wildman]

You could but I dont see how that would resolve a duplicate contact issue because the backup will have the duplicate contacts also..

[beracing115]

I would love to do that, but I can't even get my contacts to sync on BUA.  Assistant shows only a "Me" entry.  I've ran it from both the phone and online, still no luck.    I thought once you set up your Gmail account it would sync your contacts automatically, assuming you leave the sync functions checked during setup.  Which I have...  still no luck on Gmail either.

I"m seeing more posts about this very issue, but I've not seen any clear answers.  Deletes reappear, contact info inside the contact itself is duplicated, triplicated, etc if it tied to company...  This is very annoying!!! 

Another trip to the Verizon store to see what they say... 

Anyone????  Anybody else figure out this bug????

[#11]

Beracing115, thank you for sharing your concern and replying with your progress. Also, thank you to everyone in the community for your assistance!

A few things. First, how were your contacts transferred to this phone? Did the store use a machine (Cellebrite) to transfer them over, or did you have backup assistant on your previous phone? One thing that could be causing the issue is that the contacts were transferred either to the SD card or SIM card and are also on the phone's internal memory. Go to your contacts, press the Menu button, Display Options. You can uncheck the contacts that you don't want to show and also use this to see where the contacts are coming from. For example, if you only show Facebook contacts, and all the contacts are still showing, you know all the contacts are coming from Facebook. 

Also, try adding a test contact and choosing either Phone or Google to save the contact. Then sync by going to Backup Assistant on the phone or Settings>Accounts. Does this contact appear online? If so, then it does seem like the contacts that were transferred are neither Phone nor Google contacts. If this happens, you can try exporting the contacts to the SD card, then importing them back using either Phone or Google.. This would still bring the duplicates back, but at least they should back up online to make it easier to delete the duplicates online. 

[zmaerdstyle]

I've searched all over and tried all the recommendations but so far nothing has fixed this issue.  The problem with contacts duplicating is bad enough all by itself, but notes and other info multiplying 100's of times within a given contact is absurd.  This needs a fix soon!  Hopefully someone will update this thread if a reliable fix is found!

And if it helps in solving the issue, my contacts were moved over to my Bionic by a VZW rep.  I assume Cellbrite was used, but I don't know for sure.  I do not use, and have never used, Backup Assistant.  Also worth noting, under the Display Option within contacts, I only have 1 account set to show the contacts and that doesn't even fix the problem.

[jursygirl]

I have an Iphone 4. When I first started using vz transfer it only synched the new contacts to my phone but the last several months it's creating duplicates every time! Very annoying!

[jursygirl]

Hmmm this may have started when I upgraded to ios5??

[kelechi123]

So is no one from VZW going to formally respond to this very serious Contacts issue??????? Wow.  Terrible customer service...

[manyburgers]

Same problem here. I once went through on Galaxy and manually deleted every duplicate, then they all showed up again!! I officially have twice as many contacts as I should, and there are a lot to begin with. I need a fix too!