If you read part 1 of this diatribe, you will see the end result of a day of thrashing around is that I found a nice app that let me make a backup (as a VCF file) of the contacts on my old Samsung s4 phone.
The first aim today is to find out just how and where my new Pixel 6 is backing up contacts. I go to Settings, then Passwords and accounts, then to either of my google accounts, then to account sync. I tap on the selector for "Contacts", turning it off, then on. A little messages announces that it is "syncing contacts", then it displays "Last synced May 2, 2022" to indicate that it did something. What did it do? Where are those contacts?
I saw little if any connection between my old Samsung phone and the above page, but let's explore it with the Pixel 6. I use the above web page to create a new contact. And it immediately shows up on the Pixel 6. This is encouraging and new signs of life.I delete the contact on the phone, but it is still on the web page, even after I refresh the page. Then I "empty the trash" on my phone and the contact vanishes on the web page. This is also nice.
I create a new contact on the phone. It does not appear on the web page, even after a refresh. I go to settings and trigger a contact sync. It now shows up, but I have to refresh the page to see it. This makes sense.
Now we are going to get bold. I go to contacts on my phone, tap the 3 vertical dots at the upper right, tap "select all". Then tap the trash can. It moves my 200 contacts to the trash. I go to fish and manage, then select trash and delete forever. I go to settings and trigger a contacts sync. I go to to contacts web page, and they are all gone!
Now I have a clean slate and can start from scratch. I will note that my web page has quite a few things under the "frequently contacted" tab, but I am ignoring those for now. Only one displays a phone number.
Before I try to get it to restore from my VCF file with 222 entries, I know that it has a bunch of redundant junk and I would like to tidy it up. Before I launch into all of that, I want to copy it, trim it down to 2 contacts and try to get Contact Backup to just load that.
I create the file "trim.vcf" and mail it to myself. Then on my phone, I check my mail and use the download button to save the attachment.
This is not working well at all. In the "Contact Backup" app, the Restore button takes me to a short somewhat confusing popup that states if I download the attachment, it will show up on this screen. But it doesn't. They tell me to search email for ".vcf has:attachment". There is a "go to gmail" button that tells me "gmail is not installed", which is not correct.
I try something different, in gmail, there is a triangle shaped icon next to the attachment that lets me save it to my google drive. I do so. Then I go to Drive, find the trim.vcf file and I can select the Contact Backup app to give it to. The app says something about a bad path and that is the end of that. I uninstall Contact Backup. Apparently it is not ready for Android 12.
After a search, I go right to the Contacts app. At the bottom is a 2 frame selector, either Contacts or "Fix and Manage". I select Fix and Manage. This offers a bunch of handy looking options, including "import from file". I select this and then select an account and I see "trim.vcf". I tap this file to select it and am told that it will be imported shortly.
It works! I go back to the Contacts frame and there are my two contacts.
Tom's Cell Phones / [email protected]