Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

How Can I Limit -- or Select -- the Contacts I Download into My Model S?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
My Model S stopped downloading all the Contacts from my iPhone at the letter "J". I assume this is a capacity issue, since I have lots of Contacts and phone numbers for each. But my strong preference would be to cherry-pick the individual Contacts I want in the car anyway -- and if possible select which phone numbers show up for each -- and get all this down to a tidy, manageable reference. I wonder, for example, if I could pre-select a number of Groups from my Contacts, or even create a single Tesla Group to transfer.

Does anyone know if this can be done -- and if so, how best to accomplish the task?

Thanks.
 
My Model S stopped downloading all the Contacts from my iPhone at the letter "J". I assume this is a capacity issue, since I have lots of Contacts and phone numbers for each. But my strong preference would be to cherry-pick the individual Contacts I want in the car anyway -- and if possible select which phone numbers show up for each -- and get all this down to a tidy, manageable reference. I wonder, for example, if I could pre-select a number of Groups from my Contacts, or even create a single Tesla Group to transfer.

Does anyone know if this can be done -- and if so, how best to accomplish the task?

Thanks.

I think what you need is in the article below:

Managing Bluetooth Contact Sync | iLounge Tips
 
Many thanks to DaveVa. I followed the iLounge tip, created a new Tesla Group in my Mac's Contacts, filled it with the Cards I wanted, checked only the Tesla Group in iPhone's Settings>Bluetooth>Tesla S device to sync, ran out to the car, connected>disconnected>connected, and the logjam went away and everything I wanted appeared. Very nice now.

Maybe future Tesla software will warn us if our Contacts upload is near overload -- and point us to smartphone solutions -- but the editing was a good exercise for me. Happy to have another neat feature of the car performing as-advertised.
 
I read on the Tesla forums that contacts with more than 5 phone numbers will cause the transfer to stop. Pretty lame bug; my guess, given their rate of fixing lame bugs like this, is that some solution should likely roll out sometime in 2017.
 
My Model S stopped downloading all the Contacts from my iPhone at the letter "J". I assume this is a capacity issue, since I have lots of Contacts and phone numbers for each. But my strong preference would be to cherry-pick the individual Contacts I want in the car anyway -- and if possible select which phone numbers show up for each -- and get all this down to a tidy, manageable reference. I wonder, for example, if I could pre-select a number of Groups from my Contacts, or even create a single Tesla Group to transfer.

Does anyone know if this can be done -- and if so, how best to accomplish the task?

Thanks.

Out of curiosity, what phone do you have? I'm having the same problems
 
I have an iPhone 4S, running iOS 6.1.3.

I've seen the thread about a five-phone-number limit, and a cursory look at my current Tesla Sync list hasn't yet shown a card that exceeds five numbers. But what I liked about reducing my 1400+ cards to a 380-card Tesla Sync group is how my Contacts in the car are exclusively phone numbers I might call and addresses I might actually want to get to. No more sifting past obsolete, but keepable, cards with my kids' schoolmates, restaurants I'll never eat in again, doctors I stopped seeing, and electronics stores that went out of business to get where I want.

The process of populating a new Group took a lot less time than I thought it would; and checking only the Tesla Sync group on my iPhone's Bluetooth and then delinking and relinking the connections in the car was both easy and quick.

I'm quite pleased to have spent some time (that I wouldn't had it not been imposed) and ending up with a really tight Contact list in my Tesla.

Vrooom.
 
Last edited:
I complained about my phone directory's not being able to be accessed on my model S and I questioned a limit on the number of entries. the Service Center checked on this and said the limit was 2,000 entries. That's simply incorrect, unless the number has recently been reduced to 2,000. Heretofore, I was able to sync my directory on an Android SmartPhone that contains some 5,000+ entries. A couple of "things that have changed": Tesla installed a new MCU and I have a few more names on my SmartPhone than I did previously. So, whether there was a general software update change that impacted the limit or the change of the MCU or something else, I cannot say. My semi-educated guess is that there was a general software update that threw me over the limit.

I would definitely prefer not to have to tag various names and remember to keep track of which should be available on the Tesla and which should not. Yes, 5 or 6K of names is a lot, but many professional folks keep an office directory on their phones to save time, partly because it's so easy to do a large import of names and phone numbers, so I'm certainly not alone in having the requirement.

Shouldn't Tesla make known what the limitations are and what sort of work-around can be used or is recommended to deal with the problem? Just sayin'.