iPhone duplicate Contacts: One fix
My iPhone is set to read my Gmail in the native Apple Mail app, I did not care for Google's mail apps. This works fine, BUT...
Contacts get duplicated.
The internets are full of complaints and fixes for duplicate iPhone contacts, including troubles with iCloud, Gmail and Outlook syncing.
The most friendly of these lead you to buy another "fixit" app for your phone. Another phone app is a disease I wish to avoid, that's why I got rid of the Google mail apps, and I have already tried some of those contact data management apps before. They worked for a while. Sigh.
I found ONE FIX, that worked for my case. Who knows how long it will stay fixed? It's quick, so regular treatment will not be too bad!
Setting the scene:
Setting up my phone's Apple Mail app to receive the mail data from Google, I had to configure a gmail account AND (evidently) a google contacts account. The 2 seem to need each other - and after poking around it turns out that their relationship causes this dupe problem.
Here we go:
Open up your Settings, and select Password and Accounts (This is iOS as of October, 2018). There you will see the Mail account, and the Google contacts account. It seems that these 2 are using the same contact data, but sometimes they aren't completely in synch, so they add dupes when the transaction is in question.
Contacts get duplicated.
The internets are full of complaints and fixes for duplicate iPhone contacts, including troubles with iCloud, Gmail and Outlook syncing.
The most friendly of these lead you to buy another "fixit" app for your phone. Another phone app is a disease I wish to avoid, that's why I got rid of the Google mail apps, and I have already tried some of those contact data management apps before. They worked for a while. Sigh.
I found ONE FIX, that worked for my case. Who knows how long it will stay fixed? It's quick, so regular treatment will not be too bad!
Setting the scene:
Setting up my phone's Apple Mail app to receive the mail data from Google, I had to configure a gmail account AND (evidently) a google contacts account. The 2 seem to need each other - and after poking around it turns out that their relationship causes this dupe problem.
Here we go:
Open up your Settings, and select Password and Accounts (This is iOS as of October, 2018). There you will see the Mail account, and the Google contacts account. It seems that these 2 are using the same contact data, but sometimes they aren't completely in synch, so they add dupes when the transaction is in question.
So - what I tried doing was to disable one of them to see what changes when you do that. Lesseee whappens. Just a test; let's turn off the Goo-contacts "Account" button so the green goes away...
Welp, I went back out to Phone Contacts and the duplicates were gone!
So I think these two features are in a symbiotic relationship so that by design, they add a dupe item in the case of data sync conflict.
The reason I think they are interdependent is this. I went back into Settings to check that my Contacts account was still disabled ...
...Nope. It's alive!
The button toggled back to green as soon as I looked away. I think the mail contacts and the standalone contacts features are linked. Other proof is that if you try to disable the Contacts button from within the mail settings screen, you get an alert that says "Google contacts will be deleted." Those two are joined at the hip.
Just know that doing this "bounce" with the Google contacts account enable toggle seemed to force a re-sync and those dupes disappeared.
Labels: Contacts sync, Duplicate Contacts, GMail, iPhone, Syncing
posted by Chuck at
8:19 AM
