First step: Save your contacts.
You should be able to do this through your mobile phone contacts application (export to .cvc file).
Your contacts are probably saved on Google Contacts, so you can also open your email, click on the sandwich menu top right, check the “export” option.
The point is, be very sure that you exported your contacts and stored them somewhere safe.
Second step: Order the contacts
Your contacts should be saved in a single neat .cvc file. So, if you have more than one file (for example, downloading multiple contact sheets from multiple google accounts), you should merge them and have a single neat .cvc file.
How? On Ubuntu, I downloaded “vCard studio”, opened and merged several sheets and ended up with one. I also downloaded “Evolution”, then opened that same sheet and saved it as it is (somehow the vCard studio format wasn’t good for the steps afterwards).
Third step: Download the good apps
On F-droid (it is an open source app store, if you do not have it download it) download:
- DAVx → this is a software which enables synchronization from your phone to your server (cloud)
- Simple Contacts Pro SE (by Stephan Ritscher, it is a fork of simple contacts app developed by Tibor Kaputa) → this app supports synchronization, it will be your contact book.
Fourth step: Open your framagenda account
framagenda.org offers you an account of 15MB for free. This is more than enough to synchronize your entire contact book:)
Once you opened your account, you will have your cloud.
Fifth step: connect everything
Go on DAVx app. Check the “login with URL and user name”. In “base url”, start typing framagenda and select the option that pops up. Your username and password are those that you used to open your framagenda.org account (your username should be your email).
Once it connects, make sure the app is connecting your contacts (swipe “Contacts” so that it toggles orange).
You can test this. If you go on framagenda.org, on the menu dedicated to contacts, try creating a test contact. Then, open your phone, and check the contacts app we downloaded. You should see it there. It should also work the other way around (but on the phone app, make sure you save the contacts not on google drive, but on framagenda. This is the last field on the contact).
Sixth step: the point of no return (not true but I wanted something sounding drastic)
Delete all your contacts and disable the normal contact book app. They might interfere and we need a blank slate to start the synchronization process. Your new contact book app will be the one downloaded (simple contacts pro se).
Even if you delete your contacts, you have them backed up.
Seventh step: upload your contacts on framagenda
You will see, on your account on framagenda.org, that there is a “Contacts” tab. Check the sandwich menu, then “Contacts settings”, and “import contacts”. There, you will be able to import the neat .cvs file that you prepared.
Tricks:
- on framagenda.org, you might want to delete all of your contacts, and do the import again. You have to go on the address books again, but if you only have one address book, you cannot delete it. You need to first create another address book (give it any name then click on the arrow), then you can delete the first contact book.
- on simple contacts pro se app, on your phone, when you create a new contact, you need to make sure to save it in a way that it connects to the framagenda server, not to a google account. You can choose this by sliding to the last field.
Eight step: Google good bye
Go on google drive, go to the google contact app, check all your contacts, delete them.
Take a step back. Breath deeply. You made it.
com.android.contacts
) is the closest alternative to Google Contacts app (com.google.android.contacts
), in fact sharing the same code base for most part. In both cases you will still be using Google account for contacts syncing, but not with Simple Contacts app.