Just moved to WP8 from Android, not sure how to clean up my contacts

[flyinion]

Hi guys, just moved over to WP8 from Android, literally just got back from the store. I previously have had a MS Live account forever although I hadn't used it for chat much in recent years. I set the new phone up with that, and then the AT&T rep used some device in the store to move all the contact info from my old Galaxy Nexus phone from Verizon to the new Lumia 1020 I picked up.

Now in the People hub I have some contacts listed 2-4 times. Some will just have a single email and some have phone numbers etc. I found on Outlook.com on the People section in the dropdown at the top (in a browser) all my contacts but it doesn't have the new ones in there yet. Is there an easy way to clean up and consolidate all my contacts to one entry and get the new ones on the phone synced up online? I'm sure there's an easy way but being new to the WP ecosystem I'm not sure where to start.

 

[khatta]

This might be helpful.

http://forums.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-8/206825-contacts-list-vs-people-hub.html

I ran into a similar issue. The way I got around it was to export all my contacts from Gmail into Outlook (Transfer contacts between Outlook and Google Gmail - Outlook - Office.com). Then I only synced my outlook contacts to WP and disabled syncing of contacts from any other email account or Facebook. When sync is enabled for different email and social services, you will likely end up with multiple contact cards for one contact because each service will sync its individual contact information. One way to resolve it is by 'linking' all your contacts (that belong to one single contact) under people hub (Link two or more contacts | Windows Phone How-to (United States)). This way it will consolidate all contact cards under one only.

Hope this helps ... and welcome to the exciting world of WP.

 

[flyinion]

This might be helpful.

http://forums.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-8/206825-contacts-list-vs-people-hub.html

I ran into a similar issue. The way I got around it was to export all my contacts from Gmail into Outlook (Transfer contacts between Outlook and Google Gmail - Outlook - Office.com). Then I only synced my outlook contacts to WP and disabled syncing of contacts from any other email account or Facebook. When sync is enabled for different email and social services, you will likely end up with multiple contact cards for one contact because each service will sync its individual contact information. One way to resolve it is by 'linking' all your contacts (that belong to one single contact) under people hub (Link two or more contacts | Windows Phone How-to (United States)). This way it will consolidate all contact cards under one only.

Hope this helps ... and welcome to the exciting world of WP.

Thanks I think I finally got it cleaned up. I manage to double import stuff and it auto linked things as well . I also found out it was only syncing contacts once a day so I set it for the instant syncing option ("whenever they happen" or something like that) and then ended up shutting the phone off while I cleaned everything up online. The double import happened when I tried a .csv export from Google and imported it in, oops. So I had to spend 15 minutes manually unlinking everything and deleting the duplicates one at a time. Once I turned the phone back on it all synced up fine. Now the only weird thing I can't figure out is why I can't see my outlook.com email box.

The ID that it's linked to is not an outlook.com or hotmail account, I'd set my MS account up with my own email account from my website's email server. When I log into Outlook.com I still have the "welcome to outlook.com" and an email about an outlook.com alias I set up. Tapping the email icon on the phone though only brought me to a screen to set up an account. I tried selecting an outlook.com type account and put my info in there and it says "we found your stuff" basically but then errors when it should be finishing the setup. I don't actually use that account for email so it's not really a big deal, but it's weird that it wouldn't work.

 

[flyinion]

I think I figured out the outlook.com email thing, looks like I have to turn on POP access at Inbox>Options>Connect devices and apps with POP at outlook.com? I guess I was expecting it to work like Android did where you signed into the phone with your account and it automatically added that info to the gmail app. Guess I assumed signing into WP8 with an outlook.com/windows account would automatically add an outlook.com account to the phone.