How To Add Custom Field Labels in Contacts on iOS (Short answer: turn off Exchange sync.)
You know you need this.
I’ve long been frustrated by the inability of my iPhone’s contacts to have custom field labels… it stuck me with the standard “Work Phone”, “Home Phone”, “Work Fax”, and a handful of others. No way to add, say, “SkypeIn Phone”.
Well, it turns it, it wasn’t my iPhone’s fault. I was syncing my contacts to Google through Google Sync (m.google.com), what’s known as an Exchange service. Turns out Exchange can’t handle anything but the standard field names. If you sync contacts via Exchange, the iPhone and iPad can’t assign custom field names, but otherwise, it can. It seems like a trivial point but this can be a very frustrating thing to try and troubleshoot.
The short answer: find some way to sync your contacts other than Exchange. For google users, you can follow the following instructions for an alternative. For use with other servers or services, the instructions on turning off the Exchange account will work, but you’re going to have to check with your own service to see what other alternatives there are. These instructions are for iOS 5, iOS 6, and iOS 7.
DISCLAIMER: You are responsible for any unintended results of following my advice. Make sure you understand the following instructions before doing anything, and that you are knowledgeable enough to understand how to undo any mistakes you might make. If you’re not, find the nearest tech-savvy junior high school student to help you out.
So I went into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars, opened my “Google via exchange” account, and flicked the switch to turn off Contacts syncing for that account (I left Calendars on. But if you’re not also syncing Calendars or Mail with your Google Sync account, you can delete it entirely.)
Then, at the bottom of the list of accounts, I selected “Add New Account…”. It then offers you a bunch of different account types, and at the bottom I chose “Other…”. This brought me to another screen of options, one of which was “Add CardDAV Account >”. Selecting this gives you a screen asking for Server, User Name, Password, and Description. For the server, I entered google.com, and then entered my gmail account’s username and password. In Description, I entered “Google CardDAV”.
And that’s it. If you follow these steps and enter everything correctly, your phone contacts will all disappear, and then should reappear within a few minutes (make sure you do this somewhere where your phone has an internet connection.) Now, when I go into my Contacts, hit the “Edit” button, and tap on a field label like “Work Phone”, it not only offers me a long list of standard labels, but beneath that, it now offers me a list of custom labels, and the very last row is an option to Add Custom Label. No more not being able to correctly label people’s various phone numbers!
0 Comment
Kyle Miller
Mr Kupietz, found your ‘custom contacts label’ suggestion on a safari search. I’ve been frustrated by the loss of custom “add field” in ” contacts” iOS7. If you search similar queries you will find similar frustration by many people. Disappointing for Apple to actually DEGRADE functionality w a new iteration of Contacts.
As your post is a year old, I’m wondering if anything regarding this issue has improved. Most work-a-rounds are tedious. Some suggest that custom labels are only available if you sync solely w iCloud. At this point, in a home w 3 MacMinis, 3 iPads, 2 iTouch5ths, 1 iPh5C, 1 PC w W8.1, 3 PCs w W7, 1 Asus Android tablet, and 1 MotoX android, I’m wondering if I have to embrace a single Eco- system. It seems Apple is slowly and inevitably forcing consumers to “choose” a side in the iOS vs Android mobile war. Likewise, the loss of “push” functionality for Gmail -> iOS7 “mail” (for any newly activated device after ? Jan 2013? – some issue w MS Exchange no longer supported by Google except in legacy iDevices updated to iOS7) and thus the need to use the stand-alone Gmail App is the Google flip side of this tug-of-war.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated if you care to revisit this issue. Any thoughts on the success of your solution’s longevity would also be insightful. Search apple forums re: custom contact labels and you’ll see many opinions. Your solution seemed unique amount suggestions I’ve seen and might be worth posting to apple forums as well.
Thank you, kyle miller. [email protected] or [email protected]
Michael Kupietz
Really late reply here… unfortunately your comment got buried in a roaring deluge of spam comments way back when, so much incoming noise that I finally just gave up on comment moderation at all. I’ve just now been cleaning out the gunk as part of a website overhaul and finally spotted it… Mea culpa.
As of today (September 2016), I don’t really know on this particular issue anymore. Gmail, where I have all my email & contacts hosted, moved away from Exchange support, so the limitation ceased to be an issue to me either way. Truthfully I haven’t had to think about it since then. As I recall, though, some functionality was lost, yes… I seem to recall that Exchange Sync handled calendars better than they are now.
As to Apple “forcing” consumers, in the big picture, I can only agree with you there. It’s a pleasant fantasy to think they’ll be responsive to user needs but the reality is that, as the market leader, they pretty much get to dictate “user needs” and the market nods, smiles, and swallows it. Sure. We don’t want floppy drives anymore. We don’t want custom contact fields. We don’t want headphone jacks anymore (the clever, unspoken corollary to that one being, “We don’t want to use Square anymore, we prefer Apple Pay.”) We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, as the great novelist said.
You and I may protest, but we power users aren’t Apple’s target market, unfortunately. I do wish we were somebody’s.