Organising iphone contacts - how?

Chelon

Have migrated from an old Nokia to a new iphone 5s provided by my job. Phone is great but finding it a pain to organise the contacts. The Vodafone shop transferred the contacts via their magic box.

Issue:-

1. I'm seeing multiple copies of some contacts, including some names that I'm sure I had previously deleted or renamed on the old phone. No idea where the iphone is getting them from.

Questions:-

1. What is the best way of fixing the above issue? It would be too tedious to do it all on the phone - something similar to the Nokia suite would be good. I think Apple say use icloud - I fired this up and you can see some contacts but it appears very limited in its' view and difficult to use. Gave up after a few minutes. Is there a better way?

2. My work Exchange email is delivered on the phone via the Mail applet. How does the iphone handle these contacts in my email contact list? Is it possible to integrate the above mentioned contact phone numbers into Outlook, manage them on my laptop and have them appear as normal contacts on the phone? Ie could I have a single contact with email, home phone, mobile phone, etc listed, or would I have to separate Outlook and iphone contacts entirely?

3. Once the contacts are organised, what is the best way of backing them up? There seems to be a myriad of different ways to do this now, icloud, Google cloud, I think even Firefox has a cloud option now. Obviously if it is possible to do it all with Outlook then that will handle this hopefully.

It all seems overly complex, am I missing a simple way of getting it done?

lordgoat

icloud is the simplest way to sort out contacts, just go through them one by one and name them all the same way, phone contacts sync afterwards and all nice shiny neat lists.

Chelon

lordgoat wrote: »

icloud is the simplest way to sort out contacts, just go through them one by one and name them all the same way, phone contacts sync afterwards and all nice shiny neat lists.

Finding it so slow, very tedious to use. Would be here days fixing all the errors. Would prefer something local on the laptop rather than web based.

Also would ideally like something which will integrate the Outlook and phone contacts if possible, I don't think icloud can do this?

Czarcasm

Chelon here's a link that'll give you a starting point, but for what it's worth, back up all your contacts in a totally separate file first of all. I would say to you write out all your contacts and their corresponding information in an excel file first, because synching with Outlook can go disastrously wrong (as I discovered when I had five copies of over 500 contacts on the phone at one point, only when I went to set up Exchange on the phone, it wiped out my contacts on the phone. I had backups made separately luckily enough!) -


https://discussions.apple.com/message/22162291


What I would suggest is that you import your contacts from the phone into Outlook, do all the editing you need to do in Outlook, and THEN sync your phone with icloud so it replaces the existing out of date contacts with the new contacts information.

It's a pain in the proverbial the first time you have to do it, but you won't have to do it again, even when you get a new phone.

Chelon

Thanks, as I understand it then:-

1. Import contacts from phone to Outlook. I'm hoping I can create different groups for work/personal etc. just to keep them separate.

2. Edit in Outlook. After doing this can you export from Outlook to the phone? I thought the Apple/MS worlds were very different but is this possible?

3. Sync phone with icloud.

If all this works then will I end up with just one contact per person which both the phone and Outlook will use and which will contain all their contact info and be valid for all phone calls/texts/emails etc?

Czarcasm

Chelon wrote: »

Thanks, as I understand it then:-

1. Import contacts from phone to Outlook. I'm hoping I can create different groups for work/personal etc. just to keep them separate.

You'll have your Exchange Address Book in Outlook as default, but you can create a separate personal address book under the Contacts folder in Outlook (or "People" as it's now known in Outlook 2013), and you can put your personal contacts into that one, and when Outlook syncs with iCloud, your contacts will show up as separate contact groups on your phone.

2. Edit in Outlook. After doing this can you export from Outlook to the phone? I thought the Apple/MS worlds were very different but is this possible?

3. Sync phone with icloud.

To put it in some way you might be able to get your head around -


What you're basically doing is no different to the way you used work before, except you're cutting out the middle-man. The middle-man was previously Nokia Suite, and now it's the iCloud app on your computer you're cutting out. You're doing everything directly either in Outlook, or on the phone.

I will say at this point that you really, really do need to back up your contacts regularly somewhere else, because if you delete a contact in Outlook, by accident, it's deleted off the phone too, and there's no way to get it back. It happened to me yesterday evening and only for I'd their contact details backed up in an Access DB... phew!

If all this works then will I end up with just one contact per person which both the phone and Outlook will use and which will contain all their contact info and be valid for all phone calls/texts/emails etc?

Yes, and this also works if you have your Gmail set up in Outlook and want all your contacts in sync across all platforms. Basically you're doing all the work in Outlook and everything is feeding off that. Once you've got all your contacts neatly arranged and organised in Outlook, you don't have to worry about what happens on your phone, and when you add a new contact on the phone, it'll appear in Outlook on your laptop the next time you use it.

Chelon

Update on this - I contacted my work helpdesk and they agreed with Czarcasm above and gave me instructions, which I followed.

Result - the contacts in Outlook and on my phone are still different, even aftwer syncing them. The phone still has multiple duplicates and old contacts listed. Helpdesk has offered various fixes, none of which have worked so far and they are running out of ideas.

If Outlook could display the phone contacts correctly then I'd be happy to use it to resolve all the issues. I have a suspicion that it may have been the Vodafone converter at the root of some of the issues - eg some dups are like this:-

Joe Bloggs
Joe bloggs

Just slightly different. Anyone know best way forward?

Czarcasm

Hi Chelon, I usually delete these duplicate contacts manually, but there is an automated way to do it using this plugin here -

http://www.outlookfreeware.com/en/products/all/OutlookContactsRemoveDuplicates/

I've never used it myself as I prefer more control over what I'm doing, but you might find it useful.

Chelon

Thanks but the dups are on the phone, not in Outlook

Czarcasm

Chelon wrote: »

Thanks but the dups are on the phone, not in Outlook

Perhaps this app may be of some use? Again, never used it, but just throwing it out there -


https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cleaner-pro-remove-duplicate/id519077149?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Chelon

Looks interesting but will it merge eg the Joe Bloggs above(the names are different). Also the ultimate idea is to manage all via Outlook so would like to go down that route if possible.

They suggested to edit them in itunes but I really can't see how you can do that. The Apple help says you can but my itunes version doesn't have the option.