Simple-Contacts
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SimpleMobileTools
Duplicate merging more aggressive
Simple Contacts 6.4.1 (F-Droid) App set as default app for handling calls Stock Android Version 8.1
Example contact: name "John", all other fields empty (no surname, etc.), phone number "*31#+xxYYYYYY". The "*32#" prefix code unblocks the caller ID (on my phone "Show caller ID" is set to "Hide number", but John is a very good friend of mine and I don't want to call him anonymously).
If John calls me with his caller ID unblocked, my phone displays his number but not "John" from the contact data. The workaround to get "John" is to add an additional phone number without the "*32#" prefix (ie "+xxYYYYYY") to John's contact data.
This works up to Simple Contacts v6.4.0. In v6.4.1 ("duplicate merging more aggressive, compare only by full name") the app "suppresses" the workaround number. So, if John calls me I see his number but not his name. Note that the additional workaround number is still there when you enter the contact data edit mode.
For me the duplicate merging is now too aggressive. I have two contacts with same name First name and same Surname and those are now merged. This should not happen - these two contacts have different display name, organizations, phone numbers, emails, ... Please add just one setting whether to have contacts merged or not. (In fact, having a "Simple Contact" app here, I would assume that contact merging in generall is not necessary.)
I want to keep it as it is for now. Out of those thousands of users, so far not a single person reported too agressive merging.
Thanks for the fast reply. So I now made sure that affected contact have different full name ("FN" in .vcf), but they still have the same name ("N" in .vcf). According to the Changelog for 6.4.1 ("Made duplicate merging more aggressive, compare only by full name") I would assume, that those are not merged, but they are. Could you please check this? If necessary I can provide a CardDav-URL with two contacts where this can be tested.
Im merging based on the full contact name, the logic is at https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/Simple-Contacts/blob/f70428c556f78b36a31397bc21364ea05ca95f69/app/src/main/kotlin/com/simplemobiletools/contacts/pro/models/Contact.kt#L90 . Basically all fields are merged there. Prefix, first/sur/last name, suffix.
But unfortunately that may not be the "full name" ("FN") as given in the .vcf. Could you please use the full name for merging if this is given already for some contact? (I would think that this would match with the intention behind "full name".) Alternatively, could you please add the option to disable merging at all. I appreciate the work you have done with this app, but the change making "merging more aggressive" really caused some problems I would never have expected with some "Simple-Contact" app.
Sorry, but I dont want to add redundant settings for 1 person. It works just fine to everyone else.
Sounds reasonable to me. But please correct the change log that the merging now uses the value of the property type "N" (name) of a contact and in fact not its full name ("FN"). That should others keep away from wondering about the which contacts are merged as I did.
Best regards and thanks for your efforts
Tried the new release (6.4.2) - no change in the behavior described by me above. Seems that you are not willing to rethink/rework your aggressive merging approach. I've deleted Simple Contacts on two phones and installed another contacts app.
To report another use case - Contacts with "Name" that differs only by first character being in different case are merged. Still other data is different.
Like @mafanie, I also think its a good idea to consider a setting and/or document the merge conditions.
I want to chime in that I find the merging too aggressive as well, all I want is a switch. I had two people who it would be really bad to mistake end up merged. I haven't looked to find if anything else was merged yet.
Hello everyone, I would like also to chime in and say that in my opinion merging is too aggressive. I would like to have two separate contacts with the same name for example, something that is possible with the google contacts app.
I also want to confirm that the current merge method is too aggressive. I have checked my contacts and I have 170 "duplicates" according the new merging method. For example, I use names like "IT-Support", "Headquarter", "Sales" as same last name but for different companies which I have contacts. They all get merged together, although they clearly do not belong together. Also, there are some persons who really have same names but are totally different individuals.
Thanks.
As a temporary fix I wrote a short Perl script to combat this annoying merging. Details are here: Splitting and anti-merging vCard files.
starting with 6.18.0 you will be able to disable duplicate contact merging in the app settings