how can Iget my email contacts onto my iphone

Go back to your email account setting and make sure contact is checked to on.

1.you need to go settings

2.mail

3add account

4add you email and password

The advice above may not work (e.g. if you have a GMail account). So what type of e-mail account do you have?

go to contacts on your phone, choose a contact name tap editgo down to the email box where it says "email"and tap on that and then enter the email address for that contact and then tap on "done"

As you've discovered, a GMail account does not have a Contacts setting (sounds like Hotmail is the same). I've never worked with Hotmail, but GMail has a couple options for you:

1- Connect to iTunes and do a one-time load of your GMail contacts. The downside to this is that any contact changes you make (add, change, or delete) on your phone are not pushed to your GMail account and vice-versa, and they are not backed up anywhere so if you ever have to restore your iPhone then any changes you've made to contacts on your iPhone are lost (unless you use a 3rd party app to back up your contacts).

2- Set your GMail account up as an Exchange account. The benefit to this is that your GMail contacts remain synchronized, so any changes you make on the iPhone are reflected in your GMail account and vice-versa. This also means that you don't have to worry about losing your contacts -- they're always on Google's server. The other benefit is that Exchange gives you Push capability, which means you're notified of incoming messages without having to open the Mail app.

If you're interested in setting up your GMail account as an Exchange account, you can read how to do that here:

http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?l=en&topic=14252&answer=138740

I don't know if Hotmail has similar capability, but your GMail contacts are available for use in Hotmail, so maybe find a way to get your Hotmail contacts into GMail.

FYI, Hotmail can be set up as an exchange account too: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32784/sync-hotmail-with-your-iphone-or-ipod-touch -with-exchange-activesync/.

Good to know, thanks randers!

You're welcome.

If you have the same contact across multiple accounts, then yes you may see duplicates of this contact if you're displaying "All Contacts" as opposed to displaying just your iCloud contacts or just your Google contacts. However, I have the same contact in my corporate Exchange account as in my GMail account, but I only see this contact once even when I display "All Contacts" on my iPhone. I suppose if I altered the spelling in one account there would be two entries, but iOS seems smart enough to combine like entries.

Not sure why the dire warning, but how iOS handles duplicates for you could be different if you have contacts on your iPhone as well as in GMail and/or another Exchange account. I don't keep any contacts on my iPhone, they're all in Exchange or in GMail (both are "in the cloud" but not iCloud, which is just another type of account). But if you have a mix of locally-stored contacts that are the same as what you have in the cloud, then iOS may not handle the duplicates as gracefully. Just remember that locally-stored contacts are not saved anywhere else, not even in your backup, unless you have some other backup routine outside of iTunes.

As far as the warning that Google is not responsible for any loss of data, I have not seen that (nor have I experienced loss of data) but I suppose it is just a CYA move on their part. I wouldn't worry about it.

If you have further questions, it would be helpful for you to outline your exact situation, i.e. what you've done so far to establish contacts. There can be a lot of variables, so the more information you can provide will help us help you.

Junette wrote:

I have one gmail acc and one hotmail acc. but no email addresses for either acc. on my phone. So when I go to send an email from my phone using either acc. I can type in for eg. TO Garry and when I go to SEND I am told not a valid email address. When using email on my computer I can type in TO Garry and automatically his email address appears. This is what I would like to happen on my phone as well.

Because you don't have any e-mail contacts available to your iPhone, you can't just type a name and have the e-mail address populate automatically (that works on your computer because your contacts are available to your computer). This will be resolved on your iPhone once you add your e-mail accounts as Exchange accounts as described above -- the contacts that you have already in your GMail and Hotmail accounts will then become available to your iPhone to use, without having to sync them through iTunes. As you create new e-mails, just type the person's name and you'll see their e-mail(s) show up, just select the correct entry.

However, since you already have some Contacts on your iPhone (phone numbers only) you may find that you have two entries for the same person -- one with a phone number only, and the other with their e-mail. To resolve that, use your computer to edit your GMail and/or Hotmail contact entry for that person and manually add their phone number. Magically, that change will show up on your iPhone and then you can delete the contact entry on your iPhone that has only their phone number. You may want to do this for all your phone number entries, a one-time investment that will help you in the long run. Even if you have some contacts with no e-mail, you can enter those in either your GMail or Hotmail contacts. That way they're backed up automatically.

Junette wrote:

When you say you dont have any contacts on your iPhone they are all in Exchange or in GMail..what does that mean...

It means that my contacts are only saved in my GMail or Corporate Exchange account -- they are available on my iPhone, but they're not stored there. When I create a new contact on my iPhone, I have a choice of associating the contact with one of my Exchange accounts (which pushes the new entry to the server instead of being saved on my iPhone) or I can save the entry on my iPhone (which I don't do since those types of entries are never backed up).

Glad it worked! To add multiple addresses you have to add them one by one unfortunately, no matter how you set up your mail.