Hello, I recently realised that if I want my contacts (on my smartphone) to be synchronised with my murena account, I have to start all over again as they were previously stored on the “device”. This is apparently the default choice in the e-os contacts app: the contacts go into “device” storage, and are not synchronised with the murena account, even if it’s set up and active. It’s a design quirk, isn’t it? (but that’s not my main question). I discovered the problem when I logged into my murena account on a desktop computer, and saw that no contacts were saved there. I solved it like this: export my phonebook to vcf, delete all contacts on the smartphone, and re-import my contacts into the online interface of my murena account (not the smartphone “contacts” app). Then, in the “contacts” app on the smartphone, the contacts appeared. I’ve now understood the subtlety in the app settings, where you could choose between local storage and storage on the murena sycnhronised account. I opted for the murena account … and I thought I’d solved my problem (the changes seemed to apply both ways).
But when I wanted to compose sms, with the native e-os “message” app … I found that this app only used the “device-stored” contacts. Yes, that same location where I’d just deleted everything to move them somewhere else, to benefit from murena synchronisation.
Now I have murena synchronisation, but I can no longer send text messages to my contacts. I haven’t found any settings in the “message” app, the “contacts” app or the apps permissions, that allow me to force the “message” app to use the contacts in the murena account.
Am I going to have to go the other way and give up on synchronisation ? update: and the funny thing is that I’ve re-established the first situation (my contacts re-imported to “on-device” storage) … and the “message” app doesn’t even recognize them either. It only provides a few contacts I’d created the day before and which had been stored … on the murena account, and which I’d deleted in the meantime, but the “message” app seems to want to keep them, and offer ONLY those. But I’ve cleared the cache and all the application data … So now the situation is: i can’t send messages to the contacts in the app-contacts … at least using the app-message. But i still can using the app-contacts, but once beginning a conversation within the app-message, the names won’t appear, showing only unrecognized phone-numbers … not very practical.
I do find Settings in the Contacts app.
Contacts app > top left 3 bar menu > Accounts > where I choose if I use Contacts with Murena icon or device.
Thanks @aidb but i already had seen this (and used this), but doesn’t change nothing to the restrictions i experience with the app-message.
qksms, that is the upstream of app-message, is syncing it’s message and contacts database from core components in Android. Here’s code handling recipients for message listing and contacts for new messages. I don’t know what the triggers are for the sync (compose button should sync contacts?) - somehow it doesn’t update for you.
Did you give the device a reboot while doing your tests?
… I’ve cleared the cache and all the application data … So now the situation is: i can’t send messages to the contacts in the app-contacts … at least using the app-message. But i still can using the app-contacts, but once beginning a conversation within the app-message, the names won’t appear, showing only unrecognized phone-numbers … not very practical.
As said, seems app-messages contacts repository is empty. As you cleared cache and app data I’d expect app-message to do full syncs to core components on first startup after boot. With some more reading into source one could understand how to trigger the sync.
I can imagine this. But having pressed the + to “start new message” does the top line not invite you to “Type a name or number”. This would be the same behaviour as a new phone (which one achieves with Clear storage) ?
Typing the first three letters of a name is effective in getting a name and number.
@aidb : no, i get no suggestions, nothing appears
@tcecyk : Yes i made a reboot several times, doesn’t seem to change a thing. I also tried to install the “original” qksms, but it behaves exactly the same way. I can also mention that I did the e-os update yesterday (the August update) and the problem of no longer being able to access either the murena account contacts or the local contacts … appeared after this update. As, just before, I was testing the synchronization at the same time, this may not have been the only factor, but it coincides.
Might you try
Settings > Accounts > your Murena a/c > My Account > Settings, Additional > tap top of screen > Contacts > top 3 dot menu > Refresh address book list.
It looks like the app-message has just found (reason unknown) access to the contacts, but my tests have shown me that it’s the contacts stored locally that are being used. So the most urgent problem has been solved: I can now see my correspondents’ names appear in conversations. Even so, there seems to be a bug or weakness in the messaging app. At no time did it find its way to the contacts stored on my murena account. I’d be interested to know if, for others, this works (if you’ve checked that you don’t have any contacts stored locally, and that your app-message does use those in the murena account). Originally, I’d started these tests to try and resolve the absence of synchronization of my contacts with the murena account, so as to have a way of recovering my contacts in the event of loss or theft. But I’ll probably abandon this idea, and simply do a regular vcf export of my contact directory, which I’ll place in a folder that I’m sure is synchronized. (@aidb thanks for the suggestion it might be useful later)
I have no contacts stored locally and Messages always worked fine.
In your case you have made a change (for testing purposes) and some missing link appears.
Incidentally I would always want my backup .vcf off the device and off any cloud.
as a user I never had split addressbook entries between local / synced and did full deletion / imports / migrations between the types - so no I didn’t see this yet.
What you were testing is how fast qksms is picking up (full) contact database changes into its own repository - and if there’s a difference in behaviour for on-device/local entries vs synced entries in when they show up.
To go about this methodically for reproduction, test plan is doing an address book purge and importing a .vcf and see the delay or no-show in app-messages compose view.
Thanks to you both. Indeed i should redo the tests with more method, rather than “try everything quickly one after the other and therefore not knowing what exactly had an effect” 
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