Its very unlime me to be posting tech related articles on my blog but after years in software testing and writing, I thought it was time for me to start. But the first post I make had to be something that plagued me for a long time!
I have the Nokia E71 and one of the most beautiful things about that phone is the “contacts search” feature where you just start typing the name of the contact you want to call on your QWERTY keypad and the contacts appear on screen filtered as you type. You don’t have to go into contacts and then start your search! In my mind this is a very small yet brilliant addition to an already nice phone.
Now a month back or so, I had managed to accidentally turn off this feature and the regular intuitive way that I thought one would go about turning such a feature back on was leading to dead ends! Searching for this Online din’t help either because I couldn’t find references to this problem – Maybe I was searching for the wrong thing!
The fix is very simple, and in retrospect, it is very intuitive as well, but only in retrospect! Atul found this out for me and saved me a lot of pain!
Once you type a character on screen when you are on the home screen, you click the upper left ‘Options‘ button and in there is the option to switch “Contact Search” ON or OFF. This option is not available in any other menu that I could find on the phone and it took a LOT of figuring out to stumble upon this.
I hope this helps someone else facing such a problem!
January 9th, 2009 - 6:11 pm
[...] Vaz has posted to say he’s a massive fan of the intuitive nature of the E71’s contact search, the fact that just typing someone’s name brings up their details is what he reckons is a [...]
January 12th, 2009 - 9:03 pm
Hey, Thanks for the tip. I have an E71 too and I never knew this feature. very handy.
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January 13th, 2009 - 12:48 am
Hey Suraj! Glad it helped .. it certainly is a great feature for me
and I now can’t live without it!
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January 15th, 2009 - 8:28 pm
Hello Suraj,
I have been using this feature on my E71 and then it stopped working (probably my kids playing with the phone), I had no idea how torestart it. Thanks for the tip, you’re a real life saver.
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January 22nd, 2009 - 7:40 pm
Somehow I do not see “Contact Search” when I press Option (after keying in some chars), any idea why?
anil_baheti@yahoo.com
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March 5th, 2009 - 5:20 am
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!
I accidentally turned this off as well and it was driving me up the wall!!!!
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Gaurav Reply:
March 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Hey No Issues! Glad it was of help
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March 10th, 2009 - 12:27 pm
Thank you thank you thank you! I have no idea how this got turned off, but its working again! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!
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March 10th, 2009 - 3:42 pm
Thanks a lot.. found a solution as soon i had this query!! gr8 post
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March 10th, 2009 - 10:22 pm
Genius – this has been rally annoying me.
Thanks very much!
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March 12th, 2009 - 3:05 am
Unbelievable! Now I am glad I wrote about this
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March 24th, 2009 - 12:20 pm
The Contact Search option is available through the Menu by going to Tools -> Settings -> Phone -> Call -> Contact Search and switch it to “On” or “Off”
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March 24th, 2009 - 5:28 pm
Nikki – Finally!! that is buried quite at the bottom of the pile! Thanks for that
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April 4th, 2009 - 2:26 pm
i am still cannot turn it on..how to turn it on?
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April 4th, 2009 - 2:50 pm
hey..i look at my friend’s e71,the white one..
and i found the setting for contact search..but i cant find any in my e71..is it because the white is new?
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April 6th, 2009 - 1:17 pm
@eboy – I don’t think so. As far as I know, all E71’s have this feature.
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April 16th, 2009 - 3:44 pm
How can I change this sitting if I am interested to search contacts by ‘First Name’ instead of the default option of searching for ‘Second name’.., Thanks
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April 23rd, 2009 - 2:28 pm
Absolutely great help. Tones of thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!
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May 20th, 2009 - 12:18 am
Can anyone tell me how to search by phone no. on the E71? The only thing i can figure out is by dialling the specific no. and finding out if it is already saved
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May 21st, 2009 - 9:45 am
Thankx for this – might just be a coincidence but my contact search stopped working at the same time I upgraded the firmware?? Anyway, thanks to your post its back!
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May 22nd, 2009 - 9:59 pm
Thanks…this was driving me nuts…
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May 30th, 2009 - 9:09 pm
Nice one. I also was reliant on this feature but following a firmware update the feature was turned off. Thank god for the T’interweb otherwise I don’t think I would have found a fix for it.
Cheers.
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June 5th, 2009 - 4:07 pm
brilliant Thank you, i had the same problem and with this blog it help…thanks for posting
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June 8th, 2009 - 1:18 pm
thanks! this helped me too
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June 13th, 2009 - 4:34 pm
thank god
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June 15th, 2009 - 11:11 am
Too simple but too dicy to find it.Th eproblem is that this feature is not in the regular menu of “Settings” I checked the help also but somehow ur explanation was simplest. I took my phone to Nokia Care but they know how to sell phone ,, not how to manage the them. Ur blog helped me coz this feature is an execellent one.
Thanks buddy.
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June 15th, 2009 - 12:05 pm
Thanks all you guys for the comments! will keep posting more stuff if I find it
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June 17th, 2009 - 4:43 am
Arg! I had accidentally turned it off, and miraculously turned it back on… When I accidentally turned it back on I searched through every menu on the phone… Very frustrating. Glad to find this as I was going crazy! I (obviously) knew it was somewhere.
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June 17th, 2009 - 12:47 pm
Hey man, u dont know how much help you have been to me. I was going crazy trying to find this option after i accidentaly turned it off
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June 19th, 2009 - 8:05 am
Thanks heaps! Great help. It has been driving me crazy after I accidentally turned the thing off.
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June 22nd, 2009 - 12:51 pm
Great man, very helpfull
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June 25th, 2009 - 2:39 pm
Hi,
I have a unique problem.
My contact search is on and no problem with that. But recently when I search for my friend’s contact (his name is BJ), it would not search but gave me a phone number which I found out it is on the 8th location of my SIM card storage. (When u enter BJ, the screen shows 8#, which means the 8th locations of the SIM contacts) Can someone help? I used to be able to call BJ from the home screen.
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July 1st, 2009 - 4:03 pm
If your E71 does not display this option anywhere in the phone settings, it means you need to have a software update.
I found a heap of new features that were necessary but missing, most basic features… After software update, new features were added to the phone…
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July 1st, 2009 - 9:39 pm
hii. im using the white E71. but i cant find the function in my phone. is it because i didnt update the software? n if it is because of that, how can i get my software update? thanx!
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July 14th, 2009 - 7:05 am
Thanks you. I have this problem too.
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August 2nd, 2009 - 11:49 am
a real life saver… i almost do the unthinkable, nearly went beserk & just about to do a clean firmware upgrade again…
thanks
thanks
thanks!!
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August 3rd, 2009 - 9:00 pm
Thank you so much, all the way from South Africa! You’re a star for helping me solve this!
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August 9th, 2009 - 7:04 pm
Oh my god! This has been making me crazy for a few days now and I could not figure out at all how to turn it back on.
Thanks!!!
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August 15th, 2009 - 3:27 am
THANK YOU! accidentally turned the feature off as well and this certainly helped a lot!
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August 24th, 2009 - 5:56 pm
thank you man , you don’t know how much i looked for this
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September 2nd, 2009 - 1:06 pm
Thank you very much. Yes, I must have disabled it too and had no idea how to reactivate it.
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September 8th, 2009 - 8:35 am
Thank you so much, all the way from South Africa! You’re a star for helping me solve this!…
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September 26th, 2009 - 6:53 pm
My e71 does not display contact details of any landline number. Only mobile numbers have the contact details displayed. Does anyone have this problem? Any solution?? I’ve reset the phone to factory settings, with no solution.
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October 1st, 2009 - 2:21 pm
thx man… don’t know how i turned it off in the first place.. but this helped me get it back, can’t live without it! thanks alot!
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October 17th, 2009 - 10:09 pm
Thanks so much for this. I was running into dead end too and the manual was just not helping at all.
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October 25th, 2009 - 12:54 pm
OMG!
Thank you so much! i somehow turned it off too and it was frustrating me that the auto find feature disappeared! nothing in the nokia e71 manuals could tell me how to turn it on/off!
thank you!
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October 31st, 2009 - 11:47 am
Thanks man! this had been bugging me for last 2 weeks – i have spent hours looking for the fix…finally tried various ways to search for this info. No luck. Then the magic words “E71 auto find contacts” brought up this page/ Cannot believe how simple a fix it is. Youa re a total cat man!
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November 3rd, 2009 - 11:36 am
hey dude…you are a life saviour, I went thru xactly the same prob as urs but managed to find help very quickly because of ur post….thanks a ton!!! Keep up the good work!!!
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November 3rd, 2009 - 2:32 pm
Oh my goodness.
This has been doing my head in for the last week. I turned it off by accident and couldn’t work it out.
Im usually a gun when it comes to mobile phones, but i couldn’t nut this one out after so many attempts
thanks so much
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November 5th, 2009 - 3:56 pm
hahaha, it’s indeed very simple in retrospect…this has been bugging me since last 4 days. Didnt strike to me that i had to just search..
Great help…thanks dude!!!
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November 8th, 2009 - 9:11 am
You probably thought it was just a small tip (when writing this), buti just want to let you know that is helping us, the e71 users every day !!!
Thanks for the GREAT tip
p.s. i know that feeling when someone feels the small things he’s done are usefull.
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November 9th, 2009 - 6:36 am
When I open contact search button(phone icon), Moment I type any alphabet I am going back 2 screen. Do you know why?
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November 23rd, 2009 - 8:10 am
hii. im using the white E71. but i cant find the function in my phone. is it because i didnt update the software? n if it is because of that, how can i get my software update? thanx!
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November 23rd, 2009 - 8:11 am
hii. im using the white E71. but i cant find the function in my phone. is it because i didnt update the software?
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December 6th, 2009 - 4:27 pm
WOW Just like everyone this has been bugging me for so long… it worked one day and then just stopped – most likely due to my bad habit of sticking my phone in my pocket unlocked and instead of calling someone this particular instance, it obviously turned this feature off!
AWESOME big thanks!
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December 7th, 2009 - 6:08 am
Hey! Thanks!!! Never been so delighted to get it back working!!! You saved me lots of time!
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December 7th, 2009 - 6:08 pm
THANKYOU SO MUCH!! so glad its back to being good!
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December 21st, 2009 - 7:20 pm
Thanks man. It saved me a lot of time and effort. I was a little bit desperate for losing this feature and now with your help I have it back
THANKS!
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January 6th, 2010 - 12:58 am
Well, how about that – Every time I start a text message and am on the to field, and want to send it, say, to Danny, i start typing da and it shows me all the c0ntacts with da somewhere in their name, and Danny itself might be 10th on the list because some contact has da in the middle of their name or something… Can this be fixed and hsow them based on the first name as I type? It is very annoying this way! Thanks.
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January 8th, 2010 - 4:59 pm
It was driving me crazy. I fixed it. THANKS A LOT!!!
Adrian.
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January 15th, 2010 - 3:39 pm
After using the iMate JAMin that had this contacts search feature I was dubious about going to another phone. I’m glad the E71 has it – saves loads o time….and I thank GOD for your blog as somehow I switched it off. No amount of searching the user guide gave me a result. Thanks again.
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January 19th, 2010 - 4:32 pm
Hi – thanks a bunch! I too found this feature to be one of the simplest, yet most brilliant on this phone.
I was devastated to know that it has been turned off accidentally – your post is probably the ONLY one of its kind addressing this problem – Thanks a million!
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February 3rd, 2010 - 4:24 am
Thank you a lot. I also lost this after firmware update and couldn’t get it back. It is very well hidden.
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February 4th, 2010 - 12:33 am
Thanks! I was using that feature daily and one day it got turned off – and except for this article, I might never have found out how to turn it back on.
Blessings on your head!
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February 9th, 2010 - 11:44 pm
Super. So annoying and looking in Help function didnt solve the problem. Amazing that Nokia overlooked this, it seems it turns up when updating to the new firmware now available.
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February 13th, 2010 - 12:42 am
having turned it off somehow , I was going to update the firmware . Thank you for posting the remedy.
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February 15th, 2010 - 11:10 pm
mate thank you for typing this up….had the same problem and thought my phone was on the blink. much appreciated and thanks for posting this!
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March 15th, 2010 - 5:41 pm
I called the Nokia store in NYC to find out how to reactivate this feature on my E72 and she wanted me to do a hard reset of my phone. That means I would have to back up all my data and start all over again. Of course I refused to do this and told her she really needs to find the solution. She the gave me the Nokia 800 number and after holding for 10 Mins the agent want ed to do a soft reset.
Why is it that everything I need for my phone I have to come to sites like this and not the company that sold it to me. They don’t know shit. I told them that this happened with my E71 and I found the info online. Just 2 buttons and It was back on. Hard reset????
I cannot live without these phones but they really need to get to educating their staff. Thanks so much guys!
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March 18th, 2010 - 12:29 pm
Thanks. I have E71 and few days ago my phone stop searching the contacts when I start typing on the home screen. I waste a lot of time looking for the option to turn back on contact search. Now after reading this everything works fine. Great option, than you for the help.
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March 22nd, 2010 - 2:28 pm
Thanks so much. Just like everyone else here, I managed to turn this off accidentally. It’s been really annoying me, and just like everyone else, I wasted loads of time searching for the reactivate option. So easy too to solve it!
Thanks.
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April 14th, 2010 - 2:19 pm
Thanks for this tip, it was really starting to get me down. I can’t believe how easy it is to switch the option back on; I, like you, had searched high and low in the phone’s options to no avail, and decided to Google the problem and your article was the first result. Wish I had done that earlier haha.
Cheers!
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May 6th, 2010 - 4:23 am
Thanks for the help… the feature stopped working smhow….now it works..thanks to you..:)
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May 6th, 2010 - 3:27 pm
Searched all over the Nokia site for a fix with no luck, then tried this and hey presto. Perfect. Thanks.
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May 13th, 2010 - 7:48 pm
Thanks very much. This has been driving me nuts for months.
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June 1st, 2010 - 10:39 pm
This seems to be a silly problem to have, but your post has been most useful. It had been bugging me for quite sometime now. Thank you!
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June 3rd, 2010 - 7:23 pm
thank you very much
you note was very helpful
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June 16th, 2010 - 6:44 am
There is another way actually: Go to Tools>Settings>Phone>Call>Contact Search. Switch this on.
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June 17th, 2010 - 7:29 am
I felt crippled, but now I’m good again – THANK YOU!
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June 27th, 2010 - 6:20 pm
Thank you, I appreciate your publishing this so much. Suddenly the autosearch was off, for a few weeks now I had to open contacts before being able to call anybody, and this has a nasty “feature”: if you mistype and backspace one to much, it wants to delete the contact!!! My phone has actually gone missing a few commonly used contacts, I guess I must have pressed backspace once too often and then in the hurry to call, pressed yes to confirm whatever it was asking… Lucky I regularly back my outlook folders up, so I could restore the missing contacts…
Thanks, Gaurav!
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July 12th, 2010 - 1:03 pm
Thanks so much for this article. I literally was combing through the manual when my contact search suddenly went off. I started the phone multiple times and was on the brink of re-formatting the phone back to its original state until I stumbled upon your article.
Thanks mate
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July 17th, 2010 - 8:03 am
Hey, thanks, I really needed this.
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