Find-and-Replace on contacts

Question

Is thee any way to perform a find-and-replace in contacts? I want replace a letter with another one in all contacts texts. (My devise is Xperia Mini Pro androind 4.0)

Answer 1

You can export the contacts from gmail, than edit in whatever editor you want and than import back to google. Your phone should then update the changes.

How to export from gmail:

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=24911

and how to edit the CSV files:

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12119&topic=1669027&ctx=topic

There are also related links on the left (for import and other questions)

If importing them back to google makes duplicates, remove all google contacts and then import from CSV.

If your phone does not currently use google contacts sync for it's contacts you can try a similar "hack" by exporting contacts to the SD card and then importing them back.

Answer 2

As Mihic mentions a "similar hack" to process your accounts without Google:

1. open your contacts app
2. open its settings
3. chose to "export to file"

The resulting export file stored on your sdcard is in .vcf (VCard) format, which can be read by many applications. As it is mainly plain-text (except for embedded contact photos), you could do a basic search-and-replace with any plain-text-editor (do not use a word processor like MS Word), if you are careful (a simple "replace a with ae might mess up things -- so take care to specify something more unique, or let the replace ask your confirmation for each single place). Best make a copy first -- so in the worst case you still have the original.

Having finished that, you can import the resulting .vcf file the same way -- maybe after you emptied your contact list:

1. open your contacts app
2. open its settings
3. chose to "import from file"
4. select your new file, and import it