Phone Link not showing Contact Names....again

Well, I suppose "great" is a relative term. 😄

I do agree that this year's flurry of updates has markedly improved Phone Link's reliability; the connection to my old Samsung Note 9 is now much more stable.

What's not so great is that this problem with associating names to phone numbers in the Messages section still has not been fixed. Several people (me included) have posted ways to change the way phone numbers are saved in the Microsoft contact lists that seem - at least initially - to get the contact names working again. Sadly, it isn't too long before Phone Link seems to lose the association to contact names again and reverts back to showing phone numbers.

That this annoying problem continues to go unaddressed makes me wonder if the Microsoft employees responsible for Phone Link are actually using it themselves. Or is everyone only working on AI now? 😣

I'm still using Phone Link and it's working great now that Microsoft fixed the issues. My phone and computer and tablet are all connected without having to use anything Google.

This fixed mine - I use Contacts on Android, Samsung S21 - I deleted the phone number and re-entereed it and it sync immediatley and updated it. Thanks!

By Outlook do you mean the Windows program? If so then that is exactly how I handle my contacts - all entered into the Outlook app.

Scooter47's observation sent me into the Outlook contacts list to see how the phone numbers are formatted. What I found is that the problem is just as Scooter47 described. Contacts with phone numbers shown with the area code between parentheses come through with names to my Android phone just fine, however the names get lost when the phone is syncing back to the Phone Link app.

I tried reentering these problematic phone numbers as Scooter47 suggests, however Outlook proves to be pretty persistent in reformatting them with the area code between parentheses. I imagine there's a setting somewhere in the Windows jungle that controls this, but I am too lazy to search it out. Instead I found that Outlook does not reformat contact phone numbers if they are entered as a eleven digit string (1-country,3-area code, 7-number) with no separators (i.e. - ( ) +). Entered this way the names stay with the phone numbers down to the phone and back up to the Phone Link app.

Or at least it seems to work for me...

While being happy to see that the Phone Link app has become much better over the last year or two, it seems to me that Microsoft should have dealt with inconsistencies like this by now.

EDIT: Well, it worked for a while... Now it does not - at least not consistently. Cannot see any rhyme or reason why some contact names come across fine and others do not. Come on Microsoft! This cannot be a bug that is that hard to track down and fix!

Barbara, I'm sorry it didn't work for you. The contacts on my phone have been transferred from 4 different phones and 3 different computers over the years. I like your practice of solely using Outlook and then synchronizing your phone but it's too late for me.

I would think if you entered all your contacts in Outlook (Microsoft) that it would be compatible with Phone Link (Microsoft) as well, but that makes too much sense.

Anyway, for some folks, it might help to go to your phone contacts app and delete and reenter their mobile phone numbers. It worked for me immediately without the need to specifically resync. It was an instantaneous update on Phone Link making me think Phone Link was communicating in real time with my phone contacts app. I have no idea if the update was processed through Microsoft servers, my Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or some other connection.

I wonder if I can ask AI chat to fix my stuff!