Smart dialing shows all names multiple times

[tmjp]

I have a problem with the smart dial function showing the same names multiple times. All the names (that qualify in any conceivable way, either by numbers or letters) seem to be always listed at least twice, sometimes some are listed three times. (I think I once saw some name four times, but can't reproduce that now.) This is very annoying, as the dialpad already takes up most of the screen (which IMHO it should not). Tapping 8, for example, I only see a friend's name thrice, with another friend's name twice, when I turn the phone to horizontal. So two names take up five slots. This is unacceptable to me.

I suspect this may in part be caused by my having some names in one or more (local) groups and in the favourites. It seems that if a name is listed in all these tabs in the address book, it will appear three times. But sometimes it will appear three times even without being listed in all three tabs. I'm absolutely amazed at the fact that this is happening.

I was actually able to find ONE contact that only appeared once. It seems that she is not listed in my whatsapp contacts or in the google account contacts. So perhaps the smart dial lists all names from as many accounts as possible, which is completely dumb. I have also linked all contacts. In my opinion that should reduce the number of hits in smart dial, right?

I have no idea what to do here, so I really hope someone can solve this. Thanks.

[NeoBeum]

You can export it to make it faster. Just don't import or export to the SIM card anymore.

Once you export your contact list, you can load them up on to what ever program you want to use on the PC, then scroll through the list to find duplicates and merge them that way.

Once you're done, you can save it, and then import the new list back to your phone once you've finished resetting

[tmjp]

Done. Didn't work.

I suppose that's pretty much it then, I'll just have to live with it?

[NeoBeum]

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@tmjp wrote:

Done. Didn't work.

I suppose that's pretty much it then, I'll just have to live with it?

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When you have one address book set to display, and there's only one entry for the contact, and only one number, is it still displaying multiple entries when you use the smart dial?

EDIT:

Are there any fields unique to SIM contacts being transferred when you export your contact list? If so, try deleteing that field and using a field specified by Google Contacts.

[NeoBeum]

Gimme a sec, going to try something with an old SIM

[tmjp]

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@NeoBeum wrote:

When you have one address book set to display, and there's only one entry for the contact, and only one number, is it still displaying multiple entries when you use the smart dial?

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The thing is, even when I have just one address book set to display, when I enter the editing mode for a contact it shows the contact as having info locally on the device and then on my google account, as they are linked.

I just tried it for the first time now (which probably is quite stupid of me), but if I UNlink the google account contact info from a person (and still only have the local contact list set to display), I only get one instance listed.

So I guess the thing to do would be to unlink _all_ contacts now in _all_ accounts. So, it's some 300 links to break one by one, because there is no batch function.

I guess all this kind of sounds reasonable, but then again it's completely the opposite of the intuitive way of thinking about how the linking should work.

EDIT: Uh... Obviously the problem there is that not all of the address books have all of the _same_ information. So only leaving the local address book active may result in loss of email addresses. Often the entry in google contacts may be the only one with an email address. But then the list on that account is... too extensive. There's lots of unnecessary stuff there that I don't really want on my phone.

[NeoBeum]

Ok, I've replicated the problem... and you're not going to like the answer... and it could also be an unintentional bug from Android or Sony, but

The SIM contacts are fine. Import, Export, won't corrupt your address book, so you can do as you like with the SIM contacts.

Whatsapp is the same.

This is where the problem happens:

When you import a new contact, if you have that contact linked to a contact in another address book/account that you are filtering to  'hide', that new imported contact, will display All fields that are in the hidden address book.

If you unlink them, the extra fields that showed up when you imported will be hidden, as they should.

The current solution is to only have one active address book set to display in your filter.

Synced Contacts to Google will retain the exact data in the fields for phone numbers, mobile, home... basically any number.

If you back contact list up, via another export through CSV or VCF - Google will automatically format the numbers to include hyphens.

If you import this to your phone, the phone will recognize this number, link it, but create a new field with the same label. This will appear in your smart dial as a duplicate entry.

This is probably because the phone is formatting the number, and removing the hyphens when it displays, and removes spaces. You will only ever see the hypens or spaces, in their correct format when you choose to edit that contact directly.

When you unlink contacts, they will appear as seperate entries in your 'Shared' Address book, and these will be able to be toggled to visible or hidden.

Even contacts belonging to the same account, if the fields have different formatting, they will appear as a duplicate entry, in the account itself.

Here's a few examples of the contacts formatting and how they appear in the address book

This is what the unlinked DefaultGoogleContact looks like on edit

[NeoBeum]

Still the unlinked defaultgooglecontact

http://i.imgur.com/9cxnAUY.png

http://i.imgur.com/cPtRkah.png

Now this is what the LINKED ImportedSIMToGoogle contact looks like

http://i.imgur.com/0KSe7kb.png

and inside edit, one is hyphened and the other is not

http://i.imgur.com/mfxkBy4.png

http://i.imgur.com/1ZmBz0w.png

Now going back to the defaultGoogleContact, here is a linked Contact with the local address book filter on hidden

http://i.imgur.com/wSIQIR1.png

and in edit mode

http://i.imgur.com/4e9MTu7.png

http://i.imgur.com/xm9QD1D.png

http://i.imgur.com/B0N1CxI.png

 

now here's the catch...

if I unlink that (the local contact with the "hidden" label field)

http://i.imgur.com/VyjbBsT.png

(no more local address entry)

http://i.imgur.com/UKlmrgK.png

this is what happens to the contact card

http://i.imgur.com/qfR8kjD.png

http://i.imgur.com/gZ1kMci.png

http://i.imgur.com/JXPr4o3.png

 

No more hidden field and only one contact

edit:

This is now probably more of a Google Bug, than Sony

[tmjp]

So, basically this means that we can't have nice things, that being linked address books. I tried formatting a few numbers exactly alike, and they show in triplicate still.

I think really will have to unlink both the local and whatsapp accounts from all of the contacts and hide those address books. And then spend quite a while trying to make sense of my Google account contacts (which I actually already did).

It took a few hours, seeing as how slow it is to make all these changes on Google contacts, when you can't even drag and drop names into groups, and sometimes adding groups to several names at a time just fails. Not to mention how unresponsive the UI is. (Meaning you have to click up to five times for anything to happen.) It was so nice on my old phone, when I already had all the groups set up etc.    

Disclaimer: I was apparently using some (new??) Contact Preview UI. (Don't really know if that's what it's called in English, as my UI is in Finnish.) 1/10, would not do use again. I only found out after I had finished and then noticed a "Return from Contacts preview" button. Man, was I pissed. I have no idea how I ended up on that page in the first place. Still have the unlinking to do on the phone...

So, is there a way for us to mark this problem unsolvable? I guess it would be useful to also report it to google, so they might fix it at some point, right?  In any case, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate your tenacity - I would have already given up at some point if not for you.

[NeoBeum]

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So, is there a way for us to mark this problem unsolvable? I guess it would be useful to also report it to google, so they might fix it at some point, right?  In any case, thanks for all your help. I really appreciate your tenacity - I would have already given up at some point if not for you.

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it's not unsolvable, just a pain in the backside to work around.

i don't mind taking a while to look at things, it's going to help me for later on. i'm doing a student programmer, and my team are developing a game (hopefully on ps4 - our school got a ps4 dev kit, instead of a vita - which is good, because i didn't want to have to read up on asynchronous loading so the vita doesn't have a heart attack with our game) and i'm the monkey that's doing most of the back end stuff.

i wanted to make some sort of interface with the xperias, our game, and on PC, have the xperias work as an extra screen via Logitech's ARXControl. It's a far cry... but I might get there one day....

after i finish my assignments i'm probably going to make some small tools for the xperia... I've already thought of a Google Play name for it... fiXperia.

[jacobyoshi]

Hi,

Is there a resolve to this problem as I have just encountered it!?

many thanks 

Trevor