There are many people who sometimes encounter a problem that prevents them from deleting contacts from their mobile phone, or who find that this happens to them with some contacts. They have no idea what is happening or why they cannot delete or edit them, so it can be quite disconcerting and It makes you think that something strange is happening on your phone.But don’t worry, because the explanation is much simpler than you think. It’s not a virus that has slipped in or anything similar.
You probably have different types of contacts on your phone, including SIM contacts, social networks, apps, and more, so don’t be surprised if you’ve just realized this when you try to delete a specific one when it didn’t give you any problems before.
Reason why you can’t delete some contacts
One of the main reasons why you can’t delete contacts is because they are read-only. This is because the mobile detects that the contact is duplicated in different apps or services, not only in the SIM and that is why it appears as read-only, so being like this You can’t delete it or make any changes. Or you even do it and it comes back. Yes, you can delete all the others that are not in this situation, but not these ones. Although there are some phones that allow you to delete even these contacts, on yours I do, but you can do something to fix it.
Delete them like this on Android
You cannot delete contacts because they are located linked to each other by being on several agendas. Not only do you have them on the SIM but they are also in other mobile phonebooks, so if you want to fix it you will have to go to the phonebook and select the corresponding contact. Press the 3 vertical dots at the top and click on view linked contacts. You just have to hit unlink and you should be able to delete it normally. It is very simple, but if you don’t do it you will see that it is impossible to delete the contact. Step by step, this is how it is done:
- Press on contacts app
- Find the contact
- Click on the 3 dots on the top right
- Tap on View linked contacts
- Give to unlink
- Click on the read-only one and click delete
If you have an iPhone, they are deleted like this
In case you have an iPhone, you just have to go to Siri settings and turn off suggested contacts. This way, you can delete the read-only ones. You can do it like this:
- Go to settings
- Tap on Contacts
- Give to Siri and search
- Turn off the Show suggested contacts option
- Delete contact
If you have no other choice, restore factory settings
If you can’t delete it anyway, a more drastic solution is to factory reset phone. The process may vary slightly from one phone to another, but it is where you see this option in your phone’s settings. You can search for ‘restore’, ‘hard reset’ or ‘factory’. It may be in the About the phone section or other similar ones. As you can see, this option deletes the contacts, so those that are not on the SIM card would disappear.
Therefore, it is important that you make sure that The ones you are interested in are on the card and not on the phone because otherwise you may run out of numbers that you would like to keep. When you reset, before you put other accounts, delete the contacts you want from the SIM, you should be able to do it without problems. Before making this decision, if you can do it, you would also have the possibility to try on another phone In this case, they can be deleted, so you will avoid having to reset everything to factory settings and having to reinstall, configure, etc.