Linking your contacts with Facebook can be handy, but it can also be quite frustrating. Often, you’ll find that some didn’t sync automatically, that you’ve now got duplicate contacts because the names don’t quite match, or that your contacts book is overflowing with the details of Facebook friends you didn’t know you had. Thankfully, there is a way to manually link or unlink contacts with Facebook on
Android, and here we show you how. (Also see:
How to switch off notifications in Facebook Messenger.)
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How to sync contacts with Facebook
If in your contacts book you can’t see any linked Facebook contacts, you’ll first need to go to the phone app, tap contacts, and then tap more. Now, click accounts, and if you’ve got the Facebook app installed on your smartphone and are logged in, you should see Facebook there as an option.
Tap it, and then check whether you’ve turned Sync Contacts on. If not, you’ll want to turn it on now. It’ll take a moment to sync.
Now go back to your contacts book and you’ll find lots of new contacts, all of which have been imported from Facebook. Not all of them will have phone numbers but many will have email addresses at least, and they should also have profile images.
You should now tap Merge duplicate contacts in the Phone app’s Settings menu to clean your contacts book up a bit.
Still not working? If it’s just that you want to delete some of the contacts that are showing up, you can go through your contacts book and tap and hold on a contact you don’t want to see. Then tap delete.
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How to manually link contacts with Facebook
Annoyingly, though, manually merging and linking your contacts with their Facebook profiles has been difficult since Android 4.0. It’s not ideal, but the best solution we’ve found comes from a third-party app. There are several options, but the best one we’ve found so far that’s free and works well is
Sync.Me.
Sync.Me lets you match Facebook contacts with contacts already stored on your smartphone. It’s less picky than the built-in Facebook sync tool, and lets you manually choose which contacts match with which Facebook profile.
If you find that a contact is matched with the wrong profile you can simply tap on it within the Sync.Me app, tap Wrong Profile and browse Facebook to find the one that matches.
Any contacts that Sync.Me isn’t sure about will show on the Solve Matches page. Simply tap the contact’s name, and then tap the profile in the “Suggestions” section that matches, or click Facebook to manually browse your contacts and find the right person. This usually applies to contacts in your phone book that you’ve stored with just a first name.
When you’ve finished, tap Done and the app will sync all of your contacts.
You might find that some contacts still haven’t synced, particularly if you’ve listed that contact in your phone book with a nickname, or perhaps simply ‘Mum,’ or ‘Dad,’ for example. Do fix that, fo into the Sync.Me app, tap on the relevant contact, and then tap the plus icon beneath Facebook. You can now find that person’s profile and manually sync it.
How to delete all Facebook contacts
If you’ve already synced from Facebook using the method described earlier in this article, you may find that hundreds of Facebook contacts that you actually don’t want on your phone will still be showing up.
To delete them all at once without getting rid of the Sync.Me contacts and the contacts you’ve imported from other accounts, go to Contacts, tap Menu, then tap Accounts. There, tap on Facebook and then tap Remove account.
If you ever change your mind you can always go back to this page, tap Add account and then choose Facebook.
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