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I use Phone Link on my Windows 11 PC to text message through my Samsung S22+ phone. I use the desktop Outlook client on my PC and have my Outlook contacts synchronize with the Samsung Contacts app on my phone. A couple of months ago, I began to notice that the names and photos of some of the people with whom I text were no longer showing up in the Phone Link "Messages" list; just their phone numbers. Also, when I clicked "+ New message" in Phone Link, and typed their name, they never showed up in the list of matching contacts from which to choose. This was very frustrating, especially since those contacts were the ones with whom I text most often.
I tried just about everything I could think of - uninstall/reinstalling Phone Link on the S22+ and my PC, multiple syncing options, etc., all to no avail. Then I noticed that the format of the number that showed up in Phone Link was different than what I had in my Outlook contacts. The numbers in Phone Link all showed up with a leading "+1" and had a dash after the area code without parentheses, like this: "+1 123-555-1212" but the numbers in Outlook Contacts showed up like this "(123) 555-1212". I thought the issue might be a database lookup problem, so I tried to enter the same number format in Outlook that appears in Phone Link: "+1 123-555-1212". But Outlook would NOT let me enter this format! It automatically put parentheses around the area code and removed the first hyphen, like this: "+1 (123) 555-1212".
When the new contacts manager for Outlook.com (Outlook on the web) was launched a short while ago, I used the Contacts editor on those contacts and WAS SUCCESSFUL in entering the phone number in the exact format that appears in Phone Link: "+1 123-555-1212". When I sync'd my contacts to my phone, PRESTO! The names and photos of those contacts reappeared in Phone Link "Messages"! So, if you are having problems seeing a phone number instead of names and photos in the Phone Link "Messages" app, try this!
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I have experienced the same problem using stock Android (not Samsung). The issue appears to be connected with the phone app "Link to Windows" setting of "Sync contacts" under "Accounts" (from the Link to Windows home screen, click the gear icon in the upper right, then click "Accounts" at the top).
When "Sync contacts" is ON - only the phone numbers appear in the PC Phone Link app.
When "Sync contacts" is OFF - contact names appear in the PC Phone Link app.
Fixed this problem - This is what worked for me. My phone and PC were connected to different wi-fi network so "no contact names" were showing. Making sure both were on the same network and presto -it works like a charm. And alternative is to connect to your PC via bluetooth. Pulled my hair out for months, reading posts, talking to technicians. Hope this works for anyone stumbling across this thread.
I have my phone and PC connected on the same WiFi network and lose contact names and connection in general all the time. Utterly maddening. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Link uses Bluetooth only for handling voice between the phone and PC, not data. If there is a way to sever the WiFi connection and use Bluetooth exclusively, I'd love to try it, but can't find the option in Search or in the software settings. FWIW, I don't use Phone Link functionality because the audio quality is horrible.
Ditto. My phone and PC are on the same Wi-Fi network and I don't think there is an option to use Bluetooth to connect the phone to the PC except for audio. Like you, I also found the audio quality of Phone Link-managed calls to be poor. Bottom line: these suggested changes are not relevant for me... and I still have the original problem. Sigh...
Same here. WiFi network does not seem to matter.
I do notice that an update to a specific Contacts seems to restore that one Contact, so the cause may be related to a missing data sync.
However, on the bright side, I've been using Google's Messages app for SMS, and they now have a Web version to view on my PCs browser. https://messages.google.com/web to get a QR code that can be scanned.
—Doug Wilcox
