Accidentally synced all Google contacts to iphone

Question

I accidentally synced all Google contacts with email address to my iphone. Now my iphone contact listed is huge, with almost 3000 contacts. Sifting through them is a pain.

Is there a way to separate contacts with email address and the ones with phone numbers?

Answer 1

This solution assumes you have a Mac & an iPhone:

1. On your Mac, open "address book"
2. Click on File -> New Smart Group...
3. In Smart Group Name, type "iPhone Tmp"
4. In the first drop-down menu, select "Phone"
5. In the second drop-down menu, select "is set"
6. Click "OK"
7. Click File -> New Group
8. Name the group "iPhone Contacts"
9. Click on the "iPhone Tmp" group and drag all of the contacts from that group into "iPhone Contacts"
10. Plug your iPhone into your Mac and open iTunes.
11. Click on your phone listed in "Devices"
12. Click on the "Info" tab/button.
13. Check the "Sync Address Book Contacts" checkbox.
14. Check "Selected groups"
15. Check "iPhone Contacts"
16. Make sure nothing else on the page is checked.
17. Sync.
18. Be happy.

http://esjaydee.blogspot.com/2011/08/unsyncremove-gmail-contacts-from-iphone.html

Answer 2

It seems your iPhone contacts are mostly with phone numbers, while your gmail contacts are with email addresses only.

It happened to me once also. You can try to arrange contacts by phone number in Outlook (or Windows address book), then the contacts without a phone number should be found either from the top of the whole list or at the bottom. Then you delete all those contacts without a phone number with caution.

It should be a good start to delete those 3000 unwanted contacts in iPhone.

Answer 3

Not that i know of. You can however add the email to a contact with a phone number (if it is the same person of course) that would relieve you of duplicate contacts with one for email and another for phone. Unfortunately I don't know of a fast and automated way to do this. You would have to do it by hand.

Answer 4

Depending on whether you use a Mac or not, Address Book has the ability of looking for duplicates.

You can sync your Google contacts with your Mac, then look for duplicates and it will give you the option to merge.

Merge two contacts

If somehow you end up with two entries in your address book for the same person, you can easily merge the two. Select the two entries by clicking on one in the list and then Command-clicking on the other. Now click on the Card menu and choose "Merge Selected Cards". If you have a huge contact list and you suspect some duplicate entries, you can also choose "Look for Duplicate entries" from the Card menu.

Taken from here.