How to sync phone contacts to Google Contacts?

Documentation
2

Edit: Added deleting of contacts. Edit 2: Remove/re-add Google account for safety Edit 3: Dummy contact

If I understand this right, you have contacts saved locally by mistake, and you now want them synced with Google. There is no direct way to achieve this that I know of, but the following should work (details below the outlined procedure):

  1. Export your local contacts to a file
  2. Remove Google account from phone
  3. Delete all contacts
  4. Import the file to your Google account
  5. Add Google account back to phone
  6. Sync, and all contacts should appear i the People app

Extra steps to make the synced address book default for new contacts:

  1. Create a dummy contact in synced address book
  2. Once saved, you can just delete the dummy
  3. Future additions will now go in the synced address book by default

Importing directly on your phone will not work, if I remember correctly, as that always puts your contacts in local storage. (This is different from importing events to the Calendar via the UI, where you get to pick the target calendar.)

To export your contacts you will need to work from the Terminal, as described here:

and here

Before deleting contacts, you probably have to remove your Google account to avoid deletions being synced. Then delete contacts as follows:

  1. Open People app
  2. Pick Select contacts from pulley menu
  3. Pick Select all from pulley menu
  4. Tap Garbage bin icon
  5. Wait for remorse timer to run out, or swipe it left or right to delete immediately

Regarding

I agree that this is very unfortunate, and also holds for the calendar. You can’t move events between calendars either.

To somewhat easy the pain, the address book you used last time will be default for contacts added later on. So create a single new dummy contact, making sure it goes to a syncronised address book, and you won’t have to remember changing this going forward. (Same applies to Calendar.)

1 Like