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Display Contacts as "File As:" / Nicknames

(Topic created on: 25-08-2019 04:03 PM)
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TheGrimBeaker
Student
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How do I display my contacts as the "File As: feild from Google Contacts? Currently all my contacts are completely messed up.

I've tried adding a nickname but this doesn't seem to work.

Surrely I shouldn't have to rename all my conacts and enter the full name I want in the "First Name" field. That would completely mess up all my Google Contacts plus make the contacts just as disorganised.

Cheers

Pete

 

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4 REPLIES 4
Bades1978
Troubleshooter
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Hi @TheGrimBeaker,

 

This was taken from a page:

 

As of 2019, Google contacts respect the "file as" option. If you have contacts named as "FirstName LastName" and use "fileasname", the display name will be "fileasname". Also, you can search even by "FirstName" or "Lastname" or any of the entries made in google contacts. (Yeah even notes are searchable).

Taken from https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/26262/how-to-force-contacts-to-respect-file-as-or-nickna... As I don't use Google contacts (Mine are saved to my Samsung account) this site may offer the help you are asking for if what I say makes no sence, :smiling-face:

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TheGrimBeaker
Student
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Thanks.

I had seen that myself during my searches for a solution before I ended up posting here.

Unfortunately the info contained within that post does not seem to be quite true in reality.

The Samsung Contacts app does not recognise the "File As" field in a contact that has been created in Google Contacts, but then nor does the Google Contacts app. I've tried adding the desired display name via the "Nicknames" field but that didn't achieve anything.

While searching around I read that using the phonectic fields might be solution but not only did that not work, it also created another wrinkle, as both apps started sorting the names by the "Surname" rather than the "Forename", even though all the settings were set to sort via the latter.

In some cases i don't have a name entered, so the apps then file and display on the "Company" field over the File As/Nickname, which has made a number of my work contacts a right old mess.

I've since discovered that this issue is not just present on the Galaxy Note 10+, but also the Galaxy Note 8.

It's a shame, as the phone seems to be an alright device with some good features (along with a number of superfluous features), however it seems to be failing at something so simple and straightforward as this.

Bades1978
Troubleshooter
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You may have to go down the old route and re do then maybe less of a headache 😞
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jamesmacwhite
First Poster
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The Android Stack Exchange answer is a bit misleading. The further irony is that the Google Contacts app on Android itself, doesn't respect the "File as" field either. If you use the "File as" field in Google Contact on desktop it seems to be used across Gmail and other products, but the Google Contacts Android app just uses the standard name fields. You can see the file as data recorded on the contact record, so this data is being synchronised, but in terms of using the data it seems to be ignored in the app. There is no setting to control how contact names are displayed, other than ordering. The name format setting only has "First name first" or "Surname first" as options.

 

Considering it's 2019, it's pretty surprising you can't override a contact name, unless you set it via name fields. As per many examples, you may wish to enter formal name data for various contacts, but display relationship names like "Mum", "Dad", "Uncle" etc, but not actually set these as names.

 

The only way I found to achieve it, was to abuse the contact linking feature within the Samsung Contacts app, when linking one or more contacts, you can then use the "set default contact info" option and select the contact record with the name you want to show up, while maintaining proper name data for a person. It isn't perfect though.

 

 

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