Deleting Outlook synced Contacts
asked 2019-06-12 12:11:32 +0200
Using the Sony Experia X verion 3.0.3.10 Hossa
I was having email sync problems so deleted, rebooted and recreated the Outlook account. Accidentally, I forgot to uncheck the contacts on the sync options, and now I have all the corporate outlook contacts downloaded to the phone. Which is huge.
I can't find a way to delete them all, except each, individually, manually... which is going to be a long task for the corporate contact book.
I do have a phone backup, but I can't restore just the contacts from the backup... it's the whole backup, or nothing. But obviously I'll lose any SMS texts that have happened in the mean time.
How do I un-sync the contacts without destroying other data please?
(the idea coming from this, would presumably be an option in the Accounts section that allows the deletion of contacts that originated from the Outlook server... because this is not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.)
The upcoming OS release will have the new option of selecting all contacts in People app, allowing to easily share or delete all of them. However, filtering out any potential non-Outlook contacts (in your case) from the selection should be done manually by touching each of such contacts in the all-selected list.
Another way of getting rid of the unnecessary Outlook contacts, already with 3.0.3 release, is to remove the Outlook account from the phone. This makes all synced contacts vanish. You would get the emails and calendar appointments back from the server by signing in to your Outlook account, again. Messages app (SMS texts) should have nothing to do with the Outlook account - text messages will remain in the phone.
jovirkku ( 2019-06-12 14:38:05 +0200 )editThe contacts were in such a state I got as far as, "C" before restoring from backup.
The resultant restore caused all my e-mail accounts to fail , so I ended up having to remove all the e-mail accounts from the device, rebooting and re-inserting all the accounts again.
The big take away from this, is that the restore process would really benefit from allowing the user to choose what they want to bring back from the file, as opposed to bringing back everything.
msknight ( 2019-06-12 15:29:41 +0200 )editOh, and by the way, doing an e-mail restore which contains an Exchange account, onto a device that hasn't had the Exchange component loaded yet... causes the restore to hang.
msknight ( 2019-06-12 15:31:17 +0200 )editI did try that, but the contacts remained on the phone.
msknight ( 2019-06-12 15:32:04 +0200 )editTry this: - delete the Outlook account - go to Settings > Apps > People. Pull down "Delete all contacts"
jovirkku ( 2019-06-12 15:40:29 +0200 )edit