Strategy for Managing the Address Book - Captivate i897

First thing I'd do is change some of your display options in the contacts to make things a little more sane until you settle on how you want to manage contacts going forward.

Go to Contacts, then hit the menu key, the tap Display Options.  The top option will be the most useful right away: "Only contacts with phones".  That will hide all those gmail contacts that are email only.  Next you can uncheck the contact sources that you want to hide (or go into Account settings and choose to not sync contacts with that source).

That should clean things up considerably for you.

After that, you've got a few options.  You can use Samsung Kies to manage your contacts from your desktop.  You can use Gmail, Outlook/Exchange, Facebook, etc.  Personally I use Outlook, but that's probably more a holdover from having a windows mobile phone a few years ago rather than it being the best address book manager.  Ultimately this will be personal preference, and once you've settled on one, you can work on migrating all your contacts to that source.

AFAIK there is currently no charge for the AT&T addressbook.  The terms and conditions make clear this might change in the future.

Second, according to AT&T tech support, there is currently a glitch in synchronizing the Captivate with AT&T's server.  At any rate my sync log shows "failed" since I got the phone a month ago and tech support said (a few days ago) they would call me back when it has been fixed... but, that has not happened yet.  YMMV

Third, you might consider using Google's Gmail both to straighten out your phones addressbook and keeping your phones addressbook backed up.  Setting up a Gmail account and synchronizing with it makes sense in many ways as it brings together the calendar, reminders, e-mail, texting, IM, your browser's home page (using gadgets) and a few other things.

how do you use  kies  to backup your contacts??

With Keis Mini the only thing you can do is connect (someday  ) to the update server and get software updates.

The "full" version of Keis is kinda neat and would do what you want (as long as you don't want to sync with Outlook)... 'cept it won't work with the Captivate.  The full version works with every Samsung handset which is not sold in the U.S.  You can download the "full" version of Keis from any Samsung site which is not in the U.S.

AT&T only wants us to do what AT&T wants us to do with our handsets.

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@Picsman wrote:

AFAIK there is currently no charge for the AT&T addressbook.  The terms and conditions make clear this might change in the future.

 

Second, according to AT&T tech support, there is currently a glitch in synchronizing the Captivate with AT&T's server.  At any rate my sync log shows "failed" since I got the phone a month ago and tech support said (a few days ago) they would call me back when it has been fixed... but, that has not happened yet.  YMMV

 

Third, you might consider using Google's Gmail both to straighten out your phones addressbook and keeping your phones addressbook backed up.  Setting up a Gmail account and synchronizing with it makes sense in many ways as it brings together the calendar, reminders, e-mail, texting, IM, your browser's home page (using gadgets) and a few other things.

 

 

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From what I can see, Google only syncs your contacts from Google to your phone and not your phone cantacts to Google.  If there is a way to sync your phone contact to your Google account, I would like to know how to do it?

In other words when I got my Captivate AT&T transfered my contact from my old phone to the new phone.  I then added my Google account to my phone and the Google contacts were added to my phone but the phone contacts did not go to my Google account.   Phone has Google and phone contacts and Google has Google contact only.

You've probably already done this (using Android on Captivate - YMMV):

On your phone, tap on "Contacts." Tap "Settings," then "More."  Tap "Accounts."

Be sure your Google e-mail account is listed under "Manage accounts;" if not, add it using the "Add account" button at the bottom of the display.

Be sure "Auto-sync" has a green check mark next to it.  Check to be sure it says "Sync is ON" underneath your Google e-mail account icon.  I suggest you also set "Background data" to on by checking that feature.

Tap on the account and be sure "Sync Contacts" has a big green check mark next to it.

Ah, the secret:

Finally, when creating a new account on your phone, tap "Google" as the place to save the contact.  Contacts created on your phone which are set to be only on your phone are not "synced" but contacts created on Google do sync to your phone.  This is what you said  so, the trick is to create all contacts in Gmail!

GMail has been designed this way to ensure privacy... what goes on in your phone stays in your phone... what goes on in GMail goes on in GMail and your phone (if you so choose).

Initial set up for Contacts:

The place to start is to import all of your existing contacts to GMail. Check GMail from your desktop machine and read about importing and exporting contacts using a CSV file.

If I have already saved my contacts to the phone (over 250) how do I get them to Google?

Tap on "Contacts."  Tap in "Settings."  Tap on "More."  Look for "Import/Export."  Export your phone's contacts to your SD card.  Next, import what's on your SD card to GMail.  (Ah, the SD card thing here may require a whole tutorial in and of itself.  )

N.B.: I've never tried this, but I'm pretty sure it will work.

Then, once you've imported your phone's contacts into GMail, you'll probably be seeing double on your phone: Each contact will be both in GMail and on your phone!  To fix that:  Tap "Settings," then "Display options" and select which source, or sources, you want to use to display contacts on your phone.  I suggest you confirm the export/import worked correctly (and, as you do you'll almost certainly need to do a lot of editing), then delete all of the contacts which are on your phone and are also in GMail (do this carefully... look for the Google "g" and delete the "other" duplicate).

The above discussion demonstrates another reason why GMail (combined with Android) is so darn awesome.  GMail (using an IMAP server) is the universal solution to everything e-mail!