How to migrate all your contacts between two providers on android?

Question

Suppose I'm using an android phone running stock Android 6.0. Suppose further there are about 100 contacts and about 50 of them are with provider P and the rest is with provider G (as displayed by the default Google-Contacts app).

Now what I want to do is to move all the remaining 50 contacts which are still with G to P so I have every contact once and stored and synced with provider P.

How can I do this, preferably using only my phone?

Now I'd do this manually using the Contacts-App but it won't allow me change the storage provider for an established contact.

For clarification: the phone in question is a Nexus 5, provider G is obviously google using the device-default google account and provider P is posteo which is registered to Android as a "calendar service provider" via DAVDroid.

Answer 1

To do that natively only using your phone, you'd need to either manually enter all those 50 contacts to the new provider, then drop the old entries.

You might also be able to export all your contacts to SD card (using the contacts/people app: Menu › Export/Import › Export to SDCard), edit the resulting file, and import it back again – but that might be error prone.

An easier approach would be using a third party solution, like Simpler Contacts Backup – which directly lets you move contacts between accounts, according to the app's description.

Answer 2

What still works with the Android 11 Contacts app is the following:

1. go to Settings -> Export ... - just select the G contacts provider for export - take note of the filename - say - contacts.vcf
2. go to Settings -> Import ... - select P contacts provider as import destination and select the previously exported file contacts.vcf
3. in the main view, select just the G provider via the menu in the top right corner
4. Select all via the ⋮ (vertical elipsis) top right menu
5. Delete all via tapping the trash can symbol

End result: all remaining G contacts are moved to the P contacts provider

There is no need to edit the exported .vcf file, since you want to move all remaining G contacts.

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Editing would only be necessary if you want to split/filter/edit the exported contacts into multiple files before importing (only a subset of) them again. This isn't a big deal if you have a real text editor, since the format is relatively straight forward, as long as you just (re-)move complete BEGIN:VCARD/END:VCARD blocks, edit plainly encoded field values or completely remove fields.

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Note that it's advised to re-import the contacts via the same app that you've used to export them since many VCF implementations are known to have compatibility issues with each other.

See also for example:

Do not use the .vcf files exported by Android's Contacts app for any other purpose than importing again to the same Android Contacts app! Those .vcf files are using an ancient vCard format (vCard 2.1) and contain syntax errors. There are good chances that contacts will be corrupt when you try to import these .vcf files anywhere else.

DAVx5 DAVcal/DAVcard Android provider app FAQ

Answer 3

Another good app for older android versions is MCBackup - My Contacts Backup. You can use this in conjunction with a file manager like Total Commander - file manager. This will allow you to save the contacts as .vcf on the local file system. From there you can transfer it by SDcard or adb pull/push.

You can also text, bluetooth transfer, and Email the contacts to yourself.

The backup directory is:

/data/user/0/com.globile.mycontactbackup/files/backups

A solution that works with Android 10 is Super Backup & Restore. Simply install the app on the backup phone, make a backup. Install the app on the new phone, and restore using the .vcf.