Disable syncing of contact that belongs to multiple groups

Question

I have few Contact Groups.

Friends
Coworkers
Schoolmates

With someone whom I haven't communicated in many years, I add an additional group called Archived. So, for example, a person can be in multiple groups like Friends and Archived. Is there a way I disable syncing contacts to the Android device, which has the Archived group, but sync all other entries?

What I see is:
if the contact has only the Archived group attached to it,
=== then I can disable syncing that contact.
But if the contact has any other group present, along with the Archived group,
=== then I do not know how to disable it.

Answer 1

You could look at this the other way around and create another group called "not archived" or "active" or something like that, and put all of the contacts that you do want to appear on the phone in that group.

Then you could just sync this group to the phone (and don't select "Friends" "Family" or anything else to sync) and it should work.

Answer 2

I don't think you can stop contacts from syncing, even by group, but you can select what groups to display (well, this may depend on your device and the version of android). And if you can "stop syncing" for specific contacts/groups, I think that just "hiding them" and letting them to continue to sync is a better option, then you don't have a black hole of contacts that never get updated on your device.

If I go in to Contacts -> Menu -> Display Options

Here you can select what groups display in your contacts, but still sync them all. So when you decide to start talking to this person that you "archived", you go in to the contact and move them to somewhere that is visible.

Now if you have "Friends" displayed, and "Archived" not, and a person is in both, they will be displayed.