Universal Address Book

[pish_flaps]

Hello all,

Before I start, I realise that my problem will have been posted about before, but I can't find any threads that answer my specific problem. It's also quite a boring problem so anybody determined enough to help will be thanked heartily!

The phone in question is a Galaxy S3 (Android)...

I'd like to have a universal address book that I can use on my phone, back up as a single file to my PC, and also sync with a free online service. It would need lots of fields (full name, e-mail, several phone numbers, birthday, skype ID etc). Once I've created my ideal address book, I'd like to be able to e.g. add a contact to my phone and have it sync to the universal address book, and also factory-reset my phone and simply click the button to add it all back on.

I thought of doing this by registering a Gmail address I wouldn't use, then adding all the contacts there (this way I could easily import contacts from there to my phone) but there aren't enough fields for all the information I want. If you could use Outlook to sync contacts without paying monthly for an Exchange account (I don't think you can), then I think that would work, but there's no way I'm paying that kind of money to organise and sync my address book!

Any help much appreciated...

 

[carnageX]

You can add custom fields in Gmail's contacts.

Either from your People/Contacts app on the phone, or through the web interface. I've done it myself several times for people.

Also, when you mentioned making a dedicated Gmail account for contacts...thats what I did when I got my first Android phone. I don't use it for anything else except for phone apps / contacts. I don't give it out to anybody and only use it internally for myself. Been that way for about 4-5 years now, and seems to work out well.