handle contacts properly in android phones

Many people face lot of issues with the existing contacts when they switch their phone to Android . If you handle all the contacts properly when you first use your android phone, than it becomes easier to handle the contacts, When you switch the mobile , or do a factory reset

Lets say, you are now switching to Android , So, the first step is to export all the existing contacts to .vcf or Vcard , and save it in mobile’s memory card or your personnel computer. vcf holds all contacts in a single file , while vcard is created per contact.

Open your Gmail, and select Contacts , select My Contacts or you can also create your own label for the contact, Use the import option , select the VCF / VCARD file you have just created . This will upload all the contacts to Google or Gmail address book. I always prefer to upload the contacts to “My Contacts” as it will be easier to move the contacts when a new contact is created in phone. Android creates all new contacts in the folder, “My Contacts” when you create a contact in phone. Have a look into the picture below, you can see both My Contacts, and the import options

When you first use your android phone, you have to give your Google Account ID , once you do that, all contacts which are present in “My Contacts ” gets downloaded automatically to phone ! If you have uploaded the contacts to other folder, you can as well specify the foldername in the Android contact settings

Here comes the next part:

Now you have all the contacts in your phone, navigate to the contact settings and select “Save New Contact to Google” option , the text may vary from phone to phone. Whenever you create a new contact in phone, it directly gets uploaded to My Contacts of Google address book, whenever you connect your phone to data network.

This makes contact management simpler , if you switch the phone from Android to Android, You need not have to do anything like creating a VCF file, uploading etc. You just have to specify your Google account ID and all contacts get synced automatically.

In Samsung phones , you can select the contact folder by “Display Options ” in contact settings, and In Sony Ericsson phones it is called as the “Filter”

The advantage of this is , if you update a telephone number in Gmail , The same gets reflected immediately in your phone, if your phone is connected to Data Network