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Transferring contact data to new phone

  • 31 December 2018
  • 5 replies
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On Saturday I upgraded from a Samsung A3 (2016) mobile to Samsung A6 (2018) and moved my old SIM card to the new phone. However several contacts have no phone numbers. These appear to be those automatically imported/synced to my old phone either from my Outlook email account or WhatsApps.

If I go into Contacts, Manage Contacts, Sync contacts it shows Outlook, WhatsApp and my Gmail account as switched on and selecting {SYNC} ensures all the accounts are synced to at least yesterday.

What else do I need do to get these data back within my contacts, please?

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Best answer by terrywebbs 31 December 2018, 20:50

welcome to the ID community,

I know exactly why this is, if you check the contacts data on the old mobile you may find the tel numbers either being entered into a custom filed or other field not recognised by the new mobile. Other possibilities could include odd letters or numbers in the telephone number field. The number field should only contain numbers no spaces, no special characters!!! Failing that the contact data is possibly corrupt for these contacts, email addresses can cause issues like this if entered into the wrong field, or data that exceeds the variable data line length [too many letters/numbers in the data field]

Basically just double check your data on the old mobile, mobiles will let you enter anything you like into any field regardless, the big issues arise when you transfer this data to a new system, thats when stuff starts going missing because it can't translate the data fields.

Hope this helps, would like to know outcome, thank you.

If I am completely wrong then try this marvellous transfer tool from samsung
https://www.samsung.com/uk/getting-started/smart-switch/
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5 replies

terrywebbs
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welcome to the ID community,

I know exactly why this is, if you check the contacts data on the old mobile you may find the tel numbers either being entered into a custom filed or other field not recognised by the new mobile. Other possibilities could include odd letters or numbers in the telephone number field. The number field should only contain numbers no spaces, no special characters!!! Failing that the contact data is possibly corrupt for these contacts, email addresses can cause issues like this if entered into the wrong field, or data that exceeds the variable data line length [too many letters/numbers in the data field]

Basically just double check your data on the old mobile, mobiles will let you enter anything you like into any field regardless, the big issues arise when you transfer this data to a new system, thats when stuff starts going missing because it can't translate the data fields.

Hope this helps, would like to know outcome, thank you.

If I am completely wrong then try this marvellous transfer tool from samsung
https://www.samsung.com/uk/getting-started/smart-switch/
80% of issues can be resolved by turning your device off and back on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ryan
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Top advice from @terrywebbs! I hope this helps with your issue, Harold.

Ryan
Did my answer help you? If so, mark it as the Best Answer to help others! :)
H
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Terry, the old mobile included data from Outlook and was fine. I've also sample-checked in Outlook and the phone numbers which are there are in the right fields. But the new mobile, (including the initial restore from Google and Samsung data when first set up), doesn't show all the data. (It is difficult to be conclusive as some data is duplicated in different sources - Gmail, WhatsApp, Outlook, Contacts, etc).

However, I have just found out that when I went the route of Contacts, Manage Contacts, Sync contacts - what I thought was the Outlook icon is in fact the Samsung account icon!! So perhaps it isn't surprising that it's not picking up the Outlook data!! So now I need to find how to include Outlook. I've tried selecting Add Account but so far nothing seems to happen apart from being asked my Outlook password.
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terrywebbs
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@HaroldBinley have you tried the samsung smart transfer tool option?
This will surely move over the outlook part of the data.

Alternatively, please check you have the same version of outlook on both devices, this will cause you issues if they differ. Open outlook on the old mobile goto file and export data as a CSV [coma separated values]. Then email this file to your new mobile.

Once on the new mobile, open outlook and import the email data file, hey presto!
80% of issues can be resolved by turning your device off and back on ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
H
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Terry,
In theory I have the same version of Outlook, 2.2.226 (see below), but neither the knowledge or expertise of what to do if they were/are different.
Old Outlook version is 2.2.266 (Route is Settings Apps App Info
New Outlook version is 2.2.266 (295) (Route is Outlook app {Menu} {Settings} Help & feedback

So what I did was, as you suggested, to export the contacts from the old phone as a csv file, then edited in Excel, (as there were problems - (caused by additional commas in addresses?) ) .

BUT, I later found what is probably the better option (Route is Outlook app {Menu} {Settings} ) . Selecting my email account under the Settings section there is a switch for "Sync Contacts" (the help icon says this is "Sync contacts from this account to .... Android contacts). And, - and Eh voila! doing this got my Outlook contacts in my Contacts section, (there are lots of duplicated accounts - but at least they are in my new phone at least once).

Going into the route of Contacts, Manage Contacts, Sync contacts - now shows Outlook as one of the accounts.

Easy when you know how !!!!!

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