[How to] Fix partial contact sync with Microsoft Account on WP8

[AlexanderPD]

Hi, i just got a new wp8 phone (my upgrade from another wp7.8 phone) and i got this veeeery annoying problem. Just some of my Microsoft Account's contacts where syncronized with the new phone, while on the older phone with Windows Live sync all worked perfectly. Thats not a contact filter problem, even checking all i can't see all my contacts.

First of all: i'm still NOT sure about what cause this, maybe is the messenger account link with microsoft account, maybe the skype linking, but i have no real proof to tell what is the real reason. It just happen with some wp8 but not with wp7.8, a crappy microsoft's bug i think.

I lost my last days figuring how to solve this and gatering clue from the account sync behaviour:
- renaming microsoft account will get your wp to get more contacts from the synching (remember that you have to totally reset your windows phone if you change your main account name)
- If a contact you have on your microsoft account but not on your phone texts you, after a while (i think the auto-sync timeout) you will see him again in your contact list.
- on outlook.com's people tab the "delete contacts" looks pretty bugged and even if you deselect contacts you don't want to merge (different persons!) that system will not get it and you will always have the same 3 suggestion to what contact merge

I solved my problem using the windows 8's people app. Windows 8 can see all my contacts without any problem, so i can manage them.
Just do this:
- Use people app option to filter your contacts and see only the one inside microsoft account (so uncheck every other account linked to your account in the filter option, you can open that option from the right charmbar -> settings -> options)
- Get your phone under your eye and search for the first contact you have on win8 but not on wp8
- Found it? great, now you need to refresh it. To refresh just link to some other random contact, save, unlink, save again, resync contact from your windows phone.
- IF your contact has already some other links you can just unlink one of them, save, relink, save again and resync
- Now the real pain: repeat this refresh for ALL your unsynched contacts.
You don't need to re-sync your phone after every contact refresh, it's raccomanded to do this only 1 time for all your not synched contacts with a single final sync on your phone. For my tests i had to sync a lot of times and waste lot of time but you can save yourself from this pain

i saw other thread with this problem, i just quote this: http://forums.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-8/222506-cant-sync-outlook-com-contacts-my-lumia.html
he solved exporting the contact list, deleting it all and adding it again, but i don't know if you lose all the contact links with this so i found my own way

This problem ruined my first 2 days of using my phone, i hope someone can find this helpful!

 

[andrew-in-woking]

The easier way to do this is to go into the People W8 App and add all your contacts to a group. Then delete the group and in doing so remove all your contacts from the group. This should help to sync all your contacts over.

God bless

Andrew

 

[AlexanderPD]

The easier way to do this is to go into the People W8 App and add all your contacts to a group. Then delete the group and in doing so remove all your contacts from the group. This should help to sync all your contacts over.

God bless

Andrew

Brilliant! I can't test if it works (i have all my contacts synched now) but with that you can refresh all in 2 clicks! aawwww i really wanted to know that early

 

[BlueQuail]

This may be too late of a post to get a reply, but where do you add a group in the W8 People app? (I was assuming that you meant the desktop app but maybe I am mistaken)
I am having the same partial contact list sync issue and have been searching the web for an answer. Seems that you can add a group on the WP8 People app pretty easy but I cannot find where to do so on the W8.1 desktop app
All my contacts were listed while I had my gmail account synced to the phone but I thought that since all the contacts had been imported to outlook.com I did not need the gmail account anymore. So much for that idea, but I would like to get it worked out to keep things on the phone clean and straightforward. Hopefully I wont. I am using the Nokia Lumia Icon.
Thanks in advance for any advice.