I am avid users of Google contacts and there are various different reasons why this service is great. They are allowing me to keep my contacts synced trough all of the Google Services. So if you want to send an email, you are doing it after 3 letters typed, if you want to share a document with another Googler, it’s also at the snaps of your fingertips. In my company we are using Google docs as official way of sharing information and data, so I got quite used to Contacts helping me speed this process up.
Second and more important reason is syncing my contacts with my Android phone. I am power using Google contacts for quite a while, since my first Nokia Symbian phone and it was great. When I switched to Samsung Galaxy, my experience got even better! I didn’t have any contacts transfer what so ever. All my contacts seamlessly integrated with my new phone, like they were there even before I bought it. Keeping your contacts well organized within your account is time saver, plus it doesn’t make me run my mind what will happen if I loose my phone or it gets stolen, all my contacts are still with me.
This also goes for when you are writing an sms, you start typing a first couple of letters of the person you want to contact and it pops you out the name of the contact that you are most probably reaching out for. Here are some features of Google contacts and how to make most use of them:
My Contacts vs All contacts
Many of email addresses we send back and fourth never become important, in most cases they are one time deal. Contacts are still memorizing those, but keep them in “all contacts” section, while “My contacts” section are your frequently contacted friends and colleagues that you decided to add, All contacts won’t appear on your phone, while My contacts will. For less clutter on your phone, turn on the option that will hide all contacts that don’t have a number and are email only.
If you’re taking out the proverbial trash, you’ll want to add a number of people to your My Contacts. Apart from manually skimming the list, it’s advised to check out the Most Contactedpeople, as well as the View Suggestions feature when you have My Contacts selected.
Groups
As your address book grows, you will want to make sense of all of them, and that’s where groups come into play. What irritates me about groups is inability to delete Google System groups, it’s confirmed by Google employees. If you’re like me, you will make the most out if it, since they are there to stay. These groups are: Family, Coworkers, Friends and Contacts. So you should make most use out of these three.
Follow the instructions on the picture to figure out how to add contacts to groups. Once you’ve selected all relevant contacts in the middle column, you can add (or remove) them to groups in the top right corner. Selecting all contacts ‘per group’ works faster than reallocating them one by one, but increases the chance likelihood of overseeing some individual contacts.
Merge duplicates
It will happen often and this feature is a life saver. Lets say you saved a contact for it’s cell phone number, but you have his email counterpart already within contacts, trough Gmail. This feature will help you bind these two together. You can access it via Gmail, if you go to “More actions” than proceed to “Find and merge duplicates”, if Google noticed duplicate contacts you will get it in “My contacts” overview, it will look something like this:
After you check if everything is okay, proceed to click “merge” and viola, all your duplicate contacts have been uncluttered and neatly organized. For all of those contacts that Google didn’t figure out that they are duplicates, you will have to merge them manually.
Secret tip
If you are planning on becoming power user of Google tools I advise you to add birthdays of your contacts, there is a neat trick on how to import birthdays to Google calendar. I will cover this feature in future articles I am sure you will like it, because, you can easily forget about rallying on Facebook notifications for your friends birthdays.
Are you using Google contacts? If so, what do you like most about it? Do you use some other apps that help you manage them?
