I created a new entry in the (integrated) address book. After that, all entries were deleted. I am not sure whether all entries (except the new one) were deleted immediately or later. A backup was created. So nothing happened.
This has happened to me a few times. But I blamed it on the fact that I was using Whatsapp and creating new contacts there. But now I’m sure it’s because of /e/OS.
Is that a bug? Is this known?
By the way, the contacts were not deleted. Why are there actually contacts and an address book?
I have already written an identical message in the German section.
Many thanks for the links.
I find it “very nice” that this behavior has also occurred with others.
Unfortunately, the steps described there do not help.
I had initially saved all my addresses on the device and this phenomenon also occurred. Now I use DAVx5 in conjunction with the provider posteo. Here too, the addresses are deleted every few days according to an incomprehensible pattern. Sometimes only the landline numbers are deleted, then again only the cell phone numbers.
Fortunately, I only have about 150 numbers in my address book.
I have now standardized all addresses. First name - last name - number according to the same scheme (+49123456789) (including landline numbers) I have deleted all other information. I’ll keep watching to see when this happens again. I will report back. Maybe someone else has an idea in the meantime.
there’s no separate contacts / addressbook in Android itself. It’s all abstractions and the contacts app itself is a query / insertion client. Apps can interface with that provider or roll their own databases - if this is what you think of “separation”.
There’s a bit of low level tooling to get more insight if you want - the provider records the deletions too.
“Account manager” in /e/OS is a davx5 fork and both are mostly interchangeable. Users (as me) that solely rely on synced account-manager contacts haven’t reported a “disappearing issue” yet (close - but sparse description) - davx5 users did though.
If I’d be affected by your (what I think could be an aggregation) issue I could dig deeper, but I never used local contacts, used AM and davx5 in parallel or letting other Apps (messengers) contribute to the contacts provider. It should work™ as advertised, but evidently it doesn’t
A message with a lot of content. Thank you! I’ll try to answer it adequately.
Blockquote
there’s no separate contacts / addressbook in Android itself. It’s all abstractions and the contacts app itself is a query / insertion client. Apps can interface with that provider or roll their own databases
According to the explanation, is this “Kontakte” entry a product of (in my case) Whatsapp? Or vice versa?
I have made an attempt. I created a test entry in the contacts and only there… The entry is not transferred to the address book. But the reverse is true. Every entry in the address book appears in the contacts.
Then I would like to change the name of the address book, but that’s just a side note.
I would like to delete this entry from the “enemy” Google, but apparently I can’t…
Basically, I am open to tools with which I can “look” into the program.
However, my interest only goes as far as I can actively improve something for myself. I’m not interested in just looking at the technology. I’m just an end user.
Apparently you don’t use the address book function. How exactly do you do that then?
I did wonder why you used this expression and not “Contacts app”. It looks from your image above that your Posteo address book is the default. (In other words, the Contacts app probably appears as that address book, rather that a full list of your phone contacts). Thus although many phone contacts will be within Posteo, potentially many phone numbers will not show.
Thank you for your answer. I would like to start from the beginning: At first I was offered two storage options: Device and Google. I found that unsatisfactory. I wanted to have a backup. That’s why I acquired DAVx5.
Now there are three options to choose from. It is correct, posteo is set as the storage location for new contacts and not the device.
Is it possible or are there address book apps that combine the contacts and the address book? As I understand it now (or think I have understood it), the Contacts field displayed is the normal case and the address book I have built into it is not.
just think of addressbooks as providers to the central contacts database where Android will happily aggregate per identifier. The Contacts app will show that aggregation. Any App can contribute “person info” and is synonymous with addressbook. The first paragraph in the Android devdocs explain it nicely too.
As aibd shows there are options what takes precedence in saving and display (aggregation). You can give the carddav posteo entry precedence if you want and it should work - I’d expect new contacts to be backsynced by davx5 to posteo.
The “Kontakte” entry in your screenshot, if this is Whatsapp … good question - I’m not fully sure, but think it’s still an aggregate of more than one app. One can look directly at the com.android.providers.contacts sqlite database where the account_id ownership is shown per entry in a raw_contacts table before it’s aggregated for display. Though I have no more than one messenger on a phone to check - for me it will show contact info that Signal put there.
I still think there is something I am missing in your situation!
Why is your primary Contacts app displayed with a Google icon? What was the original source of this data? Is Contacts app actually not associated with a /e/OS Murena account?
Edit It is ok to use the /e/OS Contacts app without a connection to Murena cloud if that is what you want. Note how this would be a local solution, that is on the device solution, while storage Device will (I believe) be on SIM card where maybe behaviour will be less seamless than expected.
Thus transfer of your Google contacts to /e/OS Contacts app via .vcf (being sure to retain the .vcf elsewhere as backup) is an option.
the gist is - make sure that you know which account (or app) contributes all or most of your contact details, have backups (my impression is you have).
Thank you for your continued support, I really appreciate it. I don’t think this is common practice on forums either.
I have never (even before /e/OS) saved a single contact to Google. It could be that this was created when I set up the phone with Google. I’m sure it was unknowingly triggered by me. MicroG is included in the contact accounts. Like I said, I didn’t do this on purpose.
I have now deleted this microG account. Now the view looks completely different. But I don’t yet know whether the situation with the missing addresses will change.
Is this microG account on the phone still useful for anything else on my phone?
Regarding the questions:
No, I don’t have a Murena account.
I have read that saving to the SIM card is no longer supported.
Yes, I have looked very carefully at where which addresses are stored and by whom. I have now come to the conclusion that I should only create addresses directly. The function for creating WA addresses leads to a dead end. Because then this address is in the contacts, but not in the posteo address book, which still exists (in the background) and continues to be saved.
@falx_manubrium … shouldn’t the davx5-carddav-posteo entry show up in your recent screenshot or did you go from a clean state again?
I think it’s a good idea to centralize contacts to posteo, not sure Android did itself a favor with the abstraction.
@aibd on a tangent - that davx5 posteo carddav account is not device-local, it’s (almost) the same in both app code device side and on the protocol level what accountmanager does to murenas nextcloud carddav endpoint (posteo uses sabredav too, what’s doing the dav lifting inside nextcloud). It’s very much “cloud synced”
but apparently I can’t…
