How to fix the error that won’t let you delete contacts on Android

In times past, we only had an agenda to save contacts to SIM. However, today in addition to the card, these can also be stored in mobile memory, an external card, cloud services, or applications such as WhatsApp, Messenger and others. However, this means that, on different occasions, third-party software may be preventing us from deleting a specific number from the phonebook of our Android terminal.

At this point, the famous message ‘This contact is read-only’ will appear. For this, we will also see how we can delete any number we have in the fastest way.

the android bug

The Android calendar app can manage calendars that are shared in one place. This means that a person that we have saved, let’s say ‘Pedro’, with a specific phone number, is saved on the SIM card. This can make an app like WhatsApp recognize this and create its own agenda, adding Pedro.

Basically, because you have the necessary permissions through our terminal. And it is that, in case of removing access to this function, what we will achieve is that all those that we have in the messaging app appear without a name. Therefore, in this case, it is not worth avoiding it, but knowing how to eliminate it when this error begins to appear.

The other error appears when you start creating duplicate numbers, these are linked together, which means that in many cases the number is read-only and does not allow us to delete it directly from the app of our terminal. However, sometimes it will be better to duplicate than to have to suffer this failure. However, we will tell you what the steps that we must follow will be to end either of these two problems on your Android mobile.

How do I remove them?

The frustration comes when we try to delete a read-only contact from the phonebook since the message that it is not possible appears. This happens precisely because the name or number that we have saved exists in several directories and is linked to each other.

unlink them

The easiest method to eliminate the problem and regain control is through the Google app itself. The goal is to unlink contacts of those apps or accounts that are causing the blocking, in order to proceed to delete them normally.

Therefore, it will be time to follow the following steps from our Android phone:

1. We open the Contacts app and select a specific person. We recommend looking up their full name to make sure you’re removing the right person; for instance, if you look up Pamela Mccoy, you’ll see every phone number connected with them as well as other identifying information.
2. Next, we open the context menu (the three dots) and click on View Linked Contacts.
3. Then we click on unlink.
4. Now, we click again on the same number and, again, we touch on the menu of the three points.
5. By pressing on Delete we should be able to remove the number that was ‘blocked’ by now.

The only inconvenience that we can find with this solution is that if we want to delete several people at the same time, the process must be done manually, that is, one by one.

With this other trick

If the previous Unlink option does not appear on your Android smartphone (since it will depend on the customization layer), don’t worry because we can still achieve it with this little trick that we are going to explain below. To do this, you must follow the following steps:

1. Enter the Agenda app on your smartphone.
2. Find the person we want to delete.
3. Click on the Edit option (or on the pencil icon).
4. Delete the mobile number that appears > Tap Save.
5. Go back to the contact and tap on the three dots option.
6. Select Delete > OK.

Restore the mobile

Another option to eliminate them, although it is supposed a much more drastic way, will be restoring the device to factory settings. In this way, all those that are linked to each other will disappear when the internal memory of the phone is deleted.

Therefore, before carrying out this operation, you need to make sure that you have saved the contacts that interest you on your SIM card. In addition to making a backup of all the photos, videos and others, that you want to continue keeping on your Android smartphone. Once this is done, we must go to Settings> System> Reset Options > Clear all data.

goodbye to duplicates

Luckily for us, there is a quick way to delete from our phones all the people that have been stored on the Android device more than once. Although we will not delete them as such, we will combine them in such a way that they are not constantly repeated in the terminal, but will only appear once. To do this, we must do the following steps on our smartphone:

1. On your Android phone, open the Contacts app.
2. At the top left, tap Menu (the three horizontal bars) > tap Mix and correct.
3. touch To combine duplicates. If you don’t see this option, it means that you don’t have people that can be combined, that is, there are no repeating people. To accept a duplicate contact suggestion, tap To combine. Instead, to accept all duplicate number suggestions, scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap Combine everything.

However, if you prefer to choose which numbers you want to combine, you must follow the process that we are going to explain below:

1. Open the Contacts app on your Android device.
2. At the top right, tap More (three vertical dots) > Select.
3. Choose the numbers you want to combine.
4. At the top right, tap the three vertical dots again > Merge.