I have noticed an issue after merging my contacts together that is quite inconvenient. Much of the merged data is no longer editable. I haven't tested to see under which circumstances which fields become 'read-only'.

If I were to speculate I would guess that the merged contacts are linked and hidden, with one contact being primary. The question is, how do I edit the information that isn't displayed when choosing to edit the contact in the list?

This may also be the cause of a problem with conversations. When I receive an sms from a friend, it doesn't display his name, but only a number as if from an unknown person. And since I cannot edit the number on that contact leads me to to believe it might be a side-effect of the above issue. Best case scenario here is that the system doesn't recognize the numbers as being the same because of whitespaces, which is what I originally wanted to test.

Any experience with this problem, and hopefully a resolution?

I've got a slightly different problem with merged contacts that might be resolvable with a similar solution (if anyone has one?).

I had a contact from two contacts (1 that had personal details of a person and 1 that had work details for the same person).

I can now only see the personal detail of that person within the contact, however if I receive a message from that person's work phone, it will correctly associate that number with the contact (even though I can't see that association in the contact information).

Mildly related to that - I was trying to rectify this by simply setting up a new 'work' contact for that person but can't seem to copy their phone number from text messages from their work phone.

Any solutions anyone?

I've just had a thought - are you syncing contacts anywhere?

I've just checked my google contacts (which I sync with SyncML) and my merged contacts still show as separate contacts but all other changes made via my N900 are reflected.

I think you might be right in that when contacts are merged, it keeps the orignal ones and just links them behind the scenes....

It certainly seems that way. I hope we get an official response. It's quite irritating not being able to edit my contacts properly.

Another thing that's quite annoying with merged contacts (and non-merged contacts with more than one telephone number for that matter) is that in Conversations, you can't tell which number you're writing to.

I don't always want to reply to the same number. I may have recevied a text from someone's business phone but if it's out of work hours, I may wish to reply to their personal one...

strange, i don't have this problem at all. You can merge contacts and can certainly edit both natively on the n900 or using pc-suite on your laptop

niqbal - did you merge them using the option on the handset?

I haven't tried looking at the merged contacts with pc-suite (!) maybe I should try that...

to even get in more detail i have an even deeper issue. contact from my haze msn account are a pain! i merged them with my contacts and most of the time i see them online but are not being able hit the button to chat with them. the only way is to restart the n900 and hope it does that time.

for the rest the merge contacts system is a real pain.and msn plugins doesn't work like they should! you cant block or deblock people you cant send pictures etc. etc. this contacts apps should be patched very soon

PC Suite shows a limited overview of contact details, which supports the concensus so far.

That's a good point. I hadn't thought about it, but one of the advantages in my mind was the integration of different contact possibilities. I just assumed that this was user controllable until reading your post.