Contact Management on iOS
I, like many, have many email accounts that I frequently use. For many users, this includes synchronized contacts; for iOS users, that is where things can start to get messy. When you add an email account, you have the option to disable the other synchronization options, but I, like many, did not. I have six contacts groups on my iPhone, seven including those “on my iPhone”. While I was having my contacts synched in the cloud on the various services I use, they weren’t organized very well by groups. I tried to manage them using some option in settings, but none are present. I decided to go looking for an app that could help me to organize my contacts, and I found a couple.
Contact Mover Pro from developer Business Contacts Solutions costs $1.99 and promises to move, copy, or synchronize contacts between multiple address book sources. It features duplicate detection with a few settings for what duplicates it does find. I had contacts in the group “on my iPhone” which weren’t being synched with iCloud. I ran the app, selecting my source group and destination group, and after running was informed that these contacts were moved. The app worked exactly as promised and saved quite a bit of time and effort.
Upon completion, I was prompted to check out another app, Cleanup Duplicate Contacts, another offering from Business Contacts Solutions, which is free to download. An in-app purchase for $0.99 will add features like manual contact merging and batch selection of contacts for removal. The selection feature is particularly handy, as it can filter based on certain criteria, like blank email field, and remove these selected files. I made a misstep upon the first run, opting to accept a number of changes to duplicate contacts, which were identified by either phone numbers or emails. I had an office number for a few contacts that was the same and the app merged these contacts together. This wasn’t the apps fault, but maybe having a few more flags for identification could help to avoid that.
Another app I tried impressed me far less and cost a bit more: Contact Mover from Immense Networks, which sells for $4.99 on the App Store. Options are very few, as you can only select a source and destination directory. Directory selection can prove challenging, as the names for these directories are not what your accounts are named, and the only way to tell them apart is by the number of contacts in the directory that is listed. The first time I ran it, the program crashed, so needless to say I didn’t use Contact Mover again, chalking that up as $5 wasted.
When you use multiple email accounts, contact management can be a challenge on any platform. With the apps from Business Contacts Solutions, Contact Mover Pro and Cleanup Duplicate Contacts, you can easily manage those multiple account contacts with ease on your iPhone or iPad.
