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Let's say one wants Android to display their father not as "FirstName LastName", but simply as "Dad". This seems to be a pretty essential feature; and, as I have heard, it is implemented even in an old systems such as Windows Mobile.

However, while Google Contacts offer the "File As" field (which does what I'm looking for), Android does not seem to respect this field: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5724 , http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8578

The issues are pretty old; did anything changed since then? I cannot find any options to use the "File As" field on my Xperia P with Android 2.3.7 installed.

Are there any alternatives to the default Google "Contacts" application that make use of this field?

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  • It's 2023 and still appears to be an issue. contacts.google.com in browser seems to respect "file as" but "Contacts" on my Android Phone does not. Further, if I do an "@ mention" of someone in Gmail, even in browser, it fills it in with their full name, not "file as". I like to have record of their full names in my contacts, but refer to them by their preferred name (even if it's a nickname) so it's awkward, for instance, when a colleague goes by their initials and it spells out their full name when I "@ mention" them.
    – Trashman
    Jun 12, 2023 at 13:47
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    It would be better to split your post in an question and an answer part. At the moment the question part is very small which makes it hard to understand what you want to do and why. Please edit your question and answer accordingly.
    – Robert
    Nov 4, 2023 at 22:05
  • Hi Mike, this site works differently to others. It is question and answers. So, please split your post.
    – Rohit Gupta
    Nov 5, 2023 at 6:34

2 Answers 2

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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).

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    This does not appear to be respected on Android itself however. Google contacts on desktop/Gmail appears to override the name details with the contents of "file as" but the Google contacts app on Android (in my case Samsung Galaxy S10e) doesn't use it, likewise the Samsung variant behaves the same.
    – James White
    Dec 25, 2019 at 9:24
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Google Contacts WILL default to a 'File As' field as the main Contact name. You just have to create the Custom field labeled File As. Follow these steps and you can change the names to whatever you'd like, AND keep all the real information in Contact records. Very handy! Thanks

To add a “File As” field to your Google Contacts, you can follow these steps:

  1. Open Google Contacts on your computer.
  2. Click on the contact you want to edit.
  3. Click on the Edit button (pencil icon) in the top right corner of the screen.
  4. Scroll down to the Show More link, click on it.
  5. Select 'Add Custom Field'
  6. Type in what you want to file the contact as, then (MOST IMPORTANTLY) type File As in the Label field.
  7. Click on the Save button to save your changes.

That's it. Now why it's not already a field, nor in the Help section, who knows? But as of November 2023 it still works.

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