I'm right and all of you are left.
Let me start with the obvious: for a company that does email so well, doing contacts so bad is unfuckingbelievable, especially considering all those Android devices out there which supposedly use their Contacts app quite a bit.
1. There is no field for Middle Name, Prefix, Suffix, Nickname (kind of lying about this field; more details below), Company Department, or Maiden Name.
2. There is no option for ordering contacts by their last names. They can officially only be ordered by their first names, just like idiots organize their address books.
3. There is a Nickname field on the website but it doesn’t sync with Mac OS’s built-in Google Contacts sync. If that would be it there would be no issue. Eff it, I have the nicknames on my machine, I don’t need to look them up on Google Contacts. Oops, where did the effing nicknames go??? Oh, now I see, if I set up syncing with Google Contacts come time when the second sync is initiated, Google sends me down contacts without the nicknames that present themselves as newer to the ones on the Mac because well, they just had their nicknames removed in the sync, so I must really want my local contacts to be missing the nicknames as well.
4. No issues, I’ll just stop the syncing. Syncing is a difficult thing, anyways. Not something a company with a USD 168 billion market cap could ever do.
5. So I just gave up on syncing and decide I’ll be exporting my Address Book and importing it into Google Contacts. Cool. That ought to work. Wow, WTF is this? I get contacts sorted by their last name now! Wowwy wow wow wow! So, if I select all my contacts in Address Book on the Mac and File –> Export –> Export vCard and then import it into Google Contacts, I can have them sorted by their last name! Finally! YES!
6. Oh, this sorting by last name really sucks if you also use Google Chat. Your tab bar keeps saying “Mayerson says…” instead of “John”. Seeing as Chat is really effing this up I’m left to believe that Google Contacts, even when importing a vCard with clearly detailed fields, doesn’t give a crap about such insignificant details and just mashes them all together now, and Google Chat takes the “first” name in a Name field as being the First Name.
7. So who cares if it isn’t John that’s saying something to me, or if my eyeballs pop up like crazy when I see my girlfriend’s last name there and I think it’s her dad sending me a message. Sheesh!
At least I have my contacts. And Google is really nice and will help me by automatically adding those new people I email to my contact list. And I can then just look at them and… Oh, wait, I can’t look at them. Let’s see:
My Contacts says I have 881 contacts. Same number as on my Mac. So cool.
All Contacts says I have 883 contacts. Seems about right. I emailed a couple of people I didn’t have in my Address Book prior to my upload so it seems right.
I click on View Suggestions. Cause, like… those 883-881=2 contacts should be something along the lines of suggestions, right? Suggestions = 0. WTF? Am I supposed to go through them manually and see which those 2 contacts are? Apparently, I do…
I contacted Google Apps Premier support about this (I pay Google $100 bucks a year for the 2 Premier accounts I have on my main domain). Let me quote them here because although I’m getting my money’s worth in the email department, the support is lousy at best (not to mention EXTREMELY slow… I once even forgot I’d contacted them by the time I got a reply:
The issue you’ve described is expected behavior and you won’t be able to see the ‘Suggested contacts’ apart from the manner in which you’re accessing it right now. We don’t really have a solution for this specific scenario.
Thank you, Big G. Thank you for helping “organize the world’s information“.
Outlet for giving a crap.
21 Responses to 7 reasons Google Contacts sucks
simon de haan
April 28th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Do you have experience with contact management through soocial.com?
Disclaimer: I used to work for them
TJ
April 28th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I do. They are basically great but they screw up my contacts on account that I’m very anal when it comes to contact details.
E.g. Soocial merges contacts of mine that have the same name where one doesn’t have any other contact info besides a name and a picture and some birthday details with the person’s son, who has a phone number, email address and everything…
I do hope it gets better in the future.
PS: Last tested it just a couple of weeks ago when they sent out the email saying they were going to move to paid accounts. Would’ve even bought one of those lifetime accounts had it have worked fine.
max
April 28th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
There’s a really bizarre workaround for your last point. I ran into the same thing and stumbled on this after hours of searching for solutions to this and other Contacts screw-ups.
To tease the suggested contacts out:
* select “All Contacts”
* enter a single space in the contacts search box (no return) (seriously, this makes no sense but this is the magic)
* this has now split the contacts list into “my contacts” and “other contacts” … scroll all the way to the bottom to find the “other contacts”
Tadaa!
steve
April 28th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
All valid points imo, hopefully will get fixed sooner or later
TJ
April 28th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
@max: Thank you, thank you, thank you! You’ve made my day! I know it sounds stupid but I’m really anal when it comes to my contacts list so finding out who those “new ones” are is really important to me.
TJ
April 28th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
I do hope they get fixed but I’ve reported each and every issue to Google at least one year ago. I posted this only today because I got really pissed about a couple of these Google Contacts things.
I enjoy using Google products quite a lot, I just thing Google really needs to provide a decent address book that syncs well to desktop computers, both PCs (on WIndows and major desktop Linux distros) and Macs.
Peter
July 31st, 2010 at 4:55 pm
TJ – I have to agree with you on Google Contacts. I have my contacts synced between Google Contacts, Mobile Me, my desktop, laptop, and iPhone, and every once in a while Google Contacts wants to replace ALL of my 1200 contacts with another 1200 contacts. WHAT IN THE WORLD?!
I tried it once and it screwed me up completely. I also use Daylite for CRM and all the folders were destroyed. Goodby Google Contacts you have ruined my contacts over and over again.
Robert
August 15th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
See i use to own a BlackBerry which i ran google sync on for my calendar and for email. But then i didnt realize that it was also syncing my contacts. This in turn made it super easy when i got an android device to discover i didnt have to move my contacts at all. I was super happy. I was even more happy when i could go into gmail and work with my contact list and see it instantly sync with my phone. As i did cleanup online it cleaned up my phone. I have roughly 800+ contacts and before google it was a mess of duplicated and half contacts. I was able to merge gloriously.
I dont have the problems you spoke of and the syncing is flawless. So my solution? Maybe switch to Android and have the greatest contact management and sync since Blackberry. I mean with iphone or macs all you’re doing is using go between software. And thats almost always a shoddy deal.
TJ
August 20th, 2010 at 8:02 pm
I’d be willing to switch to Android if a) Google’s Contacts didn’t continue to suck with a vengeance and b) I could actually buy a good spec Android phone for a decent price and get updates to it (actually get them, preferably straight from Google, not wait around 6 months till my carrier maybe ships out an upgrade, just maybe, because hell, they just want me to buy a new phone).
JT
January 16th, 2011 at 5:50 am
My problem with Android is that Google Contacts uses a single field for a contact’s mailing address and Android has separate fields for Street, City, State, and Zip. So sync puts everything into the Street field. WTF?
Also, there’s no way to send a contact’s info to another person, like a vcard in Outlook, for example. PITA!
David Latapie
January 19th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Point number 1 is a non-issue, but I admit it is not intuitive (or too much intuitive, YMMV).
See, if you click on the “name” field, you’ll notice a small icon on the right. Click it and you’ll get the first name/family name/middle name/salutation… thing. And usually, they are filled the correct way (Google assumes a space is a separation between a first and family name and that if there are three “block”, then the second one is a middle name)
Your other point, either are valid or I did not check. In any case, you are right: Google contacts sucks !
Bien remplir les prénom, second prénom, nom… dans Google Contacts » Être adminsys
January 19th, 2011 at 3:05 pm
[...] 7 reasons Google Contacts sucks, la première raison énoncée est qu’il n’y a pas de champ prénom, nom du milieu, [...]
Creola Crisanti
February 12th, 2011 at 1:52 am
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Stuff I couldn’t do without in 2011
March 15th, 2011 at 1:58 am
[...] which I will not put.” The American Heritage Book of English Usage agrees. [↩]See the reasons why Google Contacts sucks: basically, Google thinks Christian name, middle name and surname fields can all be bunched [...]
Cruiser
April 19th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
Sage… Makes the ACT contact software… has a mobile service (120.00/yr upfront) which has to be better than this lame attempt by Google.
I haven’t tried it but it HAS to be better than Google Garbage.
Jeff Brotherston
June 6th, 2011 at 12:04 am
Yes Google contacts sucks and I really wish it was better because sync to Outlook sucks even worse. At least with Outlook I can view by company, not by first name. Doing that with 6000 plus contacts is futility. For all of the things Google does well, contacts has to be at the very bottom. With all the buzz about social networking, why isn’t contact more important? Why would I pay for the enterprise version if the entry level version is lame?
Karen
June 26th, 2011 at 5:21 pm
My problem right now with Google Contacts is loading & responding. It just sits there!!! Freezes up!! Then, it will act like it is working & you start typing and nothing!! Everything on my computer works just fine and with the expected speed – but, not my contacts. This is driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve researched, re-booted, etc. with no luck.
Any suggestions? If not, another contact database that will sync up with my iphone?
Thank you in advance for your time.
Nick
August 11th, 2011 at 7:55 pm
Anyone else noted with utter mind-boggling incomprehension the way Gmail +/ Picasa auto pick a nickname out of the first part of the contacts name, not bothering to realise that if the contact has a prefix this does not make a good nickname.
I have about 20 contacts all with the same nickname of ‘Dr’.
But I guess that this either is the way is really should be or else is a real tricky problem to solve.
Wade
January 20th, 2012 at 7:54 am
I agree, Google Contacts is terrible. Google, do something you big, do-no-evil lug!
Alton Miller
April 2nd, 2012 at 8:12 pm
A web search on “Google contacts sucks” brings up anguished conversations from 3+ years ago — and no improvements!?! My personal solution is to maintain a separate database for my PC (a text file with clusters of names that I can quickly cut & paste into the Address field of emails) and give up on any group mailing from my Android.
Billy Cheeseballs
May 8th, 2012 at 2:14 am
Everything you discuss above, I resolved in summer 2010 without trouble on my iPhone, in 2011 with an Android, and again this weekend with my new Android all except for being able to view contacts with the first name prefix for the two Androids. I like to be able to quickly see Dr. and Mr/Mrs/Ms for the few ambiguous names I don’t contact much. Syncing on my iPhone and Outlook via Google was always a bit cumbersome for all three to be in perfect sync, but my methods worked to keep it in sync with 24-hour patience. My Android however handles Outlook and Google Contacts like a charm!
FWIW, I can live without prefixes I guess, but other than not experiencing the GChat issues you have, your list is/should be obsolete.
1. Name fields have always been there on the web app Contacts page.
2. Yes, there is. There was then and there is now. At least for Web app: More > Sort by > [x] Last name. Android > People > Menu > View > View contact name as > Last name first
3. Nickname. This is an Apple issue. It’s an issue for all devices and varies by Contacts service, too. There are easy work arounds but this isn’t the place to cover them all.
4. Syncing has its hiccups. iOS 5 has made it troublesome but I haven’t bothered fixing i as my iPhone is now just a phone-capable iTouch that never makes/takes calls. Blackberry is a pain to get going but easy once setup. And I haven’t had any troubles with Android Google Apps/Voice contacts whatsoever except for HTC interference, but that has always been negligible and never affects Google contacts.
5. Use Google Contacts as your base. To build that base, export from every address book and import into Excel to cleanup. Then wipe out all address books every, turn off syncing everywhere, upload the clean file to Google, and then enable syncing. All good.
6. I’ve had no trouble or confusion using Google Chat, I’ll pay closer attention to see if I see what you see but just don’t notice what you see.
7. Again, I have many, many, many common last names and first names and I just don’t have any troubles in GChat.
Google, Apple, Yahoo and Microsoft and Apple, HTC, Blackberry, LG, Sony and whatever other software/hardware big wigs need to establish Address Book standards to make syncing worry-free amongst all combinations. But why would they when enterprise services rake in cash due to all this miscommunication and penis-size warfare?