Transferring contacts to my new Pixel 6 - part 2

If you read part 1 of this diatribe, you will see the end result of a day of thrashing around is that I found a nice app that let me make a backup (as a VCF file) of the contacts on my old Samsung s4 phone.

The first aim today is to find out just how and where my new Pixel 6 is backing up contacts. I go to Settings, then Passwords and accounts, then to either of my google accounts, then to account sync. I tap on the selector for "Contacts", turning it off, then on. A little messages announces that it is "syncing contacts", then it displays "Last synced May 2, 2022" to indicate that it did something. What did it do? Where are those contacts?

• Contacts.google.com

I delete the contact on the phone, but it is still on the web page, even after I refresh the page. Then I "empty the trash" on my phone and the contact vanishes on the web page. This is also nice.

I create a new contact on the phone. It does not appear on the web page, even after a refresh. I go to settings and trigger a contact sync. It now shows up, but I have to refresh the page to see it. This makes sense.

Now we are going to get bold. I go to contacts on my phone, tap the 3 vertical dots at the upper right, tap "select all". Then tap the trash can. It moves my 200 contacts to the trash. I go to fish and manage, then select trash and delete forever. I go to settings and trigger a contacts sync. I go to to contacts web page, and they are all gone!

Now I have a clean slate and can start from scratch. I will note that my web page has quite a few things under the "frequently contacted" tab, but I am ignoring those for now. Only one displays a phone number.

Restore from my VCF file

Before I try to get it to restore from my VCF file with 222 entries, I know that it has a bunch of redundant junk and I would like to tidy it up. Before I launch into all of that, I want to copy it, trim it down to 2 contacts and try to get Contact Backup to just load that.

I create the file "trim.vcf" and mail it to myself. Then on my phone, I check my mail and use the download button to save the attachment.

This is not working well at all. In the "Contact Backup" app, the Restore button takes me to a short somewhat confusing popup that states if I download the attachment, it will show up on this screen. But it doesn't. They tell me to search email for ".vcf has:attachment". There is a "go to gmail" button that tells me "gmail is not installed", which is not correct.

I try something different, in gmail, there is a triangle shaped icon next to the attachment that lets me save it to my google drive. I do so. Then I go to Drive, find the trim.vcf file and I can select the Contact Backup app to give it to. The app says something about a bad path and that is the end of that. I uninstall Contact Backup. Apparently it is not ready for Android 12.

After a search, I go right to the Contacts app. At the bottom is a 2 frame selector, either Contacts or "Fix and Manage". I select Fix and Manage. This offers a bunch of handy looking options, including "import from file". I select this and then select an account and I see "trim.vcf". I tap this file to select it and am told that it will be imported shortly.

It works! I go back to the Contacts frame and there are my two contacts.