Database Develop

[Q] Managing contacts...

I'm an android noob, just came over from the iPhone camp so please bear with me..
I've had the sgs for a couple of days and so far been trying to get a good handle on managing my contacts...
I used to backup / sync my iphone in itunes and my company outlook. I had a recent backup of my contacts in outlook, so the easiest way to get them on the android was to sync them over...
Now they show up in my corporate group.
Then I sync'd my facebook and it did a decent job of linking most of my contacts (I really like the way android does this as opposed to iphone)
I also had a recent list of contacts on my sim since I had been iphone-less for a couple of months and was using the old nokia flipper.
Now I have a couple of questions...
I've got my contacts display options only showing me the corporate and facebook groups (with phone numbers) .. so the list looks good !!! however when I send or receive a text message, it also shows all my sim contacts. A few of my sms threads were linked to the sim contact (only first name, no picture etc) .. the only way i found to resolve this was to delete that particular contact off my sim...
question 1) how do you delete all sim contacts ? (couldnt find a select all)
question 2) do I really have to delete my sim contacts? or can I disable it altogether so it won't show anywhere in my phone
question 3) next time I get some cute girl's phone number, it'll get stored as a "phone" contact .. how do I keep my corporate (outlook) contacts in sync with phone contacts... or can I put her number right in the corporate (outlook) group so it stays in sync with my exchange account ..
I don't want to end up with a bunch of numbers as phone contacts and another bunch as outlook / corporate contacts. I'd like to be able to back it all up somehow (like itunes would backup the iphone and sync with outlook)
Thanks for your insight and wisdom

if you are having trouble using Kies to manage your contacts, you can try this better alternative
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=765081

I installed android manager .. still no way to delete all sim contacts !!! amazes me why such a simple task is just not possible...
well good thing i have my 8 year old nokia phone that does it for me
Also annoying that I cant just turn off sim contacts so I won't have to delete all of them (another thing 8 year old nokia just does!)

indeed we have apps like this
http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.shao.Copy2SIM
to copy contacts to SIM
but we have nothing to manage contacts from SIM
LOL

That's cool .. I plugged the sim in the nokia and wiped all of its contacts .. not the android doesnt get confused anymore..
now if i could only find that patch to fix my sms time stamps .. i'd be a happy android camper.. I tried 3rd party sms apps, but they dont seem to read my "exchange corporate" contacts .. so every text shows with just the phone number .. sigh

to hide your sim contacts on samsung galaxy S use the options :
contacts->menu->display option->choose contacts to display "UNCHECK SIM"
hope this helps

[Q] SMS Contacts

So i recently got myself a Samsung galaxy s3 mini and after disabling my Facebook, Skype contacts from my phone book to show just sim contacts i thought that would be it. I notice that when i want to send a text message to someone all my contacts show from all my accounts. I'm not sure how to get rid of these, I don't want to delete the accounts just hide them. Does anyone know how to hide other contacts from sms contact list and only show sim contacts

Samsung Contacts + Google Contacts\SMS\email - syncing issues are getting annoying

I have never minded using both Samsung and Google's services since the system-level apps for Samsung cannot always be uninstalled. I have found many Samsung apps to actually be better than Google's, especially with the OneUI update and some of Google's in a mess, but right now I am reaching a point where it is affecting my contacts and such to a point that I am annoyed.
When I am on my phone, I have multiple ways to contact people on any given app.
On Samsung Messages, if I tap on one person's icon to open the contact info for them, it will open properly. If I tap on a second, it will say "CONTACT NOT FOUND" even though they are linked and in my phone\contacts for both Google and Samsung - and I can access it any way. I can even type them in as a person to send a contact.
Then there is the issue that Samsung and Google contacts do not always format phone numbers the exact same, leading to minor issues here and there with area codes, international codes, etc.
Last, I noticed if I go into my Samsung account and look at a contact, it lists a whole 4 or 5 "LINKED CONTACTS" with the same information.
I thought that I already merged all my duplicate contacts with my Google contacts long ago? I did not have any issues with this on my Galaxy Note8, even with the version of the OneUI apps I had on there.
Here's what I am getting at: I am positive I am not missing any setting, but running into the inevitable. Easy contact syncing between phone\email\contacts was possible with Android 8 and my Note8, but updates and overhauls have created a problem where it is messing up again.
Do I even need to keep my Samsung account active on my phone? Can I uninstall the Contacts and Messages apps by using the ADB force-uninstall command? I am sure it will work but I do not want to break my phone too much
I'm also tired of having two calendar apps.
I actually like all Samsung's but I need to be able to move in and out seamlessly between computer and phone and right now Samsung isn't providing the integration it had in the previous versions of these apps for me.
Even Maps is a bit too different.
Advice?

is it worth having a samsung account on my s10?

So I have had my Samsung s10 for a while since January and you can have a samsung account. Its annoying that you have to have a samsung account just for discord in the games launcher as well as to see what other apps to update in the galaxy store.
The main reason is it can backup my phone such as lock screen settings app icon layouts. Not sure what else having a samsung account can backup. Settings as well as Samsung app settings. As I used to use helium app to backup and sync since 2011 but development seems to have stopped as I get few bugs and issues with the app that makes it hard to use.
I do use folder sync to move taken photos and screenshots off my phone to cloud as well as backup signal chats.
The dark side of having a Samsung account is privacy and control over my data.
So any advice and what things did you find when having a Samsung account?

Question Samsung Email/Contacts - Exchange Activesync autocreating a contacts group when syncing from outlook.com via activesync

Not sure if you all have seen this before, but the scenario I noticed today when adding my live.com account to my tab s8+ was:
1) I have a galaxy 22 ultra, and my outlook.com account is sync'd to it for samsung email/contacts etc (not through the Outlook app). I've had that account for years on my previous galaxy phones, and no issues ever.
2) On my tab s8+, I added my outlook.com account to the same samsung email/contacts with activesync (and auto-sync is turned on).
3) As a result, on all of my contacts on my outlook.com account, every single one is now a member of a samsung contacts group called "Galaxy Tab S8+ (Contacts)".
Looks like the tab is autocreating that group for some reason (I am guessing to preserve some sort of sync integrity if the same account is sync'd on multiple devices?). I've tried trashing the group from both my phone and the tab(and chose the option to NOT delete the members but only just delete the group), and within a few seconds, the group gets recreated and that property is reapplied to all of the contacts. If I remove the outlook.com account from my tablet (leaving it set up only for my s22 ultra), then the group does not get recreated.
Have any of you seen this happen or found any setting in sync properties etc to disable this autocreating of this group? It seems unnecessary, though I could be thinking to simplistically and it's actually required in the background from some reason. I didn't think it would be, as I have other accounts (Office 365, Google) on both the tab s8 and s22 ultra, and no such groups get autocreated. Wondering if it may be an outlook.com connector thing, but hopefully there's a way to stop this. Thank you in advance for any guidance or suggestions. It would be wonderful to be able to bring down my contacts to my tab without having this annoying group label now show up everywhere across all of my devices.

I can't speak to this specifically, but I will say that for my phone, when I "briefly" went from the Pixel 1 to the Galaxy Note 10+ for a year and a half, Samsung managed to mangle my contacts. Now I have duplicates of many of my contacts that in some way aren't recognized as duplicates by Google. I only have Samsung for the Tab S8 Ultra any more. The hardware's great, I just wish they wouldn't enforce their services which duplicate already existing Google services.
I apologize that I don't have any helpful advice.