Dealing with Samsung account backups

[sekito]

Like most people my contacts and emails are in Google. But Samsung account which is also on the same Google email also has a backup all of my contacts somehow.

So now in my phone app I see some context twice and they cannot be merged because one is from the Google account and one is from the Samsung account.

 I think I don't need Samsung to backup any of my contacts full stop is there a way to delete them all from the Samsung account and also not sure anything from the Samsung account in my contacts apps.

[Troubadour]

Your contacts can be stored in your phone, your sim card (I think Samsung is turning that off, not sure, your contscts list on one device, your contacts list on another, etc. For me syncing to my Google account is best because I can login on any browser and access it. Although once synced you can delete some you will often be given the choice to merge. Do this carefully, e.g. I and my wife both have the same home number, so check before merging.

[Troubadour]

BTW this means I don't worry about what's on backup as for day to day use I am always on a sync version.

Be careful, the Google may be syncing from your Samsung contacts and if syncing by deleting them you may lose them. Contacts often appear there because updating to a new phone may have put them there.

[sekito]

I definitely don't have anything on my SIM card or the device and it says it's on the Samsung account and I don't know how to deal with

[Troubadour]

I think as long as you have a contacts app Samsung is going to back it up. From memory it takes very little space. Why do anything?Also if your device becomes inoperable you can recover the data on another device. Be careful, though, doing that may over-write the latter devices storage. I did it, successfully, when I transferred the backup from a Tab A8 to a phone.

[sekito]

As I said isee it show two of every contact? Normally you would think they would be merged between different services but somehow Samsung is displaying that Google and Samsung account separately. I actually did carefully look up the Samsung account one and deleted it and then it recreated it

[Troubadour]

One possibility is that you haven't got sync turned on. Another approach is that you might need to imerge contacts manually. Open the Contacts app, click on top left, three lines to see some options. One of them is Manage Contacts, then choose Merge Contacts or Sync contacts. Start with the first.

Another option in gmail, on left side scroll to the bottom, open Settings. You should see
General settings
An email address
Add account

If you see two different email addresses then consider if you want to delete one. Unless you are asked this shouldn't delete the account, merely delete it from appearing in gmail.. If you want to be careful then ckeck if you are using an app called Samsung email and set up samsung email there. Then check if samsung email appears there and update. If you have been forwarding email from one email address to another then think about fixing that first. I usually access gmail rules on a desktop browser as more options appear. In case my advice is waffly look up the problem in both Google AND YouTube as there are easier to follow guides there.

[iftt]

Oh the same situation but it's actually beneficial to have two types of backups Samsung and Google to choose from Samsung lets you selectively restore each piece of the backup and the data where Google just does each category and there's no granularity when restoring so more is preferable when backing up data.

[iftt]

Also be aware that backing up this data is a separate process to synchronising with the account

[sekito]

Backup is done automatically when setting up the phone right? I have my Samsung account so I'm assuming it's doing it in the background