Unable to edit Contacts in Google Contacts that have a specific Label?

Question

I appear to have a problem with a corrupt(?) label in Google Contacts that is assigned to many contacts. Everything was OK when last edited my contacts about a week ago (when I specifically edited a bunch of contacts with this label).

• I'm unable to edit any contact that has this label. I get the error "Problem with updating contact". None of the reasons given in the "learn more" link to the help docs applies to my situation (regarding "limits").

  UPDATE: I can seemingly edit the contact on Android/phone and get no error. However, it doesn't seem to be sync'd, unlike edits to other contacts without this label. The edit does seem to remain on the phone.

• I seem to be able to edit any other contact that does not have this one label.

• I can remove this label from the contact. Then successfully edit and save the contact. But if I then try to add the label back again I get the error: "Can't edit labels" and the label is not added (no "learn more" link and I can't find much about this particular error).

• If I try to rename the label I also get the error: "Can't edit labels" and the label is not renamed. (I can rename other labels OK.)

Are there any fixes for this without having to remove and recreate a new label?

Answer 1

I wasn't able to resolve this "corrupt" label. The problem still persists - the "corrupt" label remains.

However, as a workaround, I was able to create a "new" label and assign the same contacts to the new label (and removing the "corrupt" label) en masse.

1. Create a "new" label.
2. Select all contacts with the "corrupt" label (option on the toolbar).
3. Select "Manage Labels" (icon on the toolbar) and in the dropdown list of labels, unselect the "corrupt" label and select the "new" label and hit [Apply].

Unfortunately, the "corrupt" label (now with 0 contacts assigned) cannot be deleted as I get the error: "Problem with deleting label".

And I'm unable to rename the "new" label to the same name as the "corrupt" label as (you might expect) I get the error: "Label name already exists".

I cannot now add any contacts to the "corrupt" label. It seems this "corrupt" label is just going to remain, a pollutant amongst my nicely ordered labels!