Facebook - Account already exists

[bjitima]

My wife's Droid X started acting up about a month ago and has continued to get worse since. It started out with the default dialer refusing to load. We temporarily downloaded a third party app to deal with that. Then, the background started acting goofy. Once it got to the point where every time you hit the space bar the keyboard would minimize, we decided to go ahead and back everything up and restore it to factory.

After restoring it to factory, she got things set back up somewhat close to how she had them before. However, some of the Facebook contacts didn't sync to the phone contacts. When we first set the Droid X up back in January, there was an option in contacts to Link contacts to other contacts. I can no longer find this option anywhere. So I modified a couple of her phone contacts so they would hopefully match the Facebook contacts and update the contact picture automatically like it was doing before. However, that didn't seem to work. So I thought if I removed the Facebook account from the Social Networking app and re-added it, that might force a refresh.

This was not the case. I removed the account, and now when I go to re-add the Facebook account, it says:

Account already exists
You can only have one active Facebook service account at a time.

I don't have a Droid so I'm not super familiar with it aside from just playing around with her's occasionally. I have looked everywhere that I can think of to clear cache and settings, but can't find anywhere to clear this account so that it can be recreated. If I tell her that she has to do another hard reset a day after she got most everything set back up, I may just end up being served with divorce papers.

For the benefit of my marriage's well being, does anybody have any suggestions on where I should go from here? ;-D

[CJM]

You say you removed it, but did you try uninstalling it then reinstalling it?

Tapped from an Unbrickable DROID

[bjitima]

I removed the account from the Social Networking app. When that wouldn't let me re-add it, I uninstalled the actual Facebook app as well. The app seems to work fine, but from some Googling, apparently the app no longer has the sync contacts option. From what I can tell, bringing the contacts in has to be done by adding the account to the Social Networking app.

Edit 1:
I have tried to do it in the following ways:

Contacts | Menu | Accounts | Add Account | Facebook | Popup : Account already exists
Settings | Accounts | Add account | Facebook | Popup: Account already exists
Social Networking | Menu | Manage accounts | Add Account | Facebook | Popup : Account already exists

I have tried all three ways both with and without the actual Facebook app installed. On the Setup accounts screen that I try to choose Facebook on, the app has a normal Facebook logo and the built in social networking option has a Facebook logo with a green check mark.

Edit 2:
I have also just tried resetting her Facebook password to try to force it to be removed. This also did not work.

[CJM]

How about menu\settings\accounts & sync. Then select Facebook.

This is the option I get on my original droid to sync contacts

Tapped from an Unbrickable DROID

[bjitima]

When I go to Menu | Settings | Accounts, I do not have Facebook listed. I have Phone - Backup Assistant, and email@gmail.com Google. That is where I earlier selected the account and then hit Remove account. I immediately tried to go back to Add account and that was when the account already exists error message began.

[CJM]

Hmm, that social networking app may be making the difference. I don't have that on my phone.

Tapped from an Unbrickable DROID

[bjitima]

That's weird...the social networking app was a preinstalled app. It basically is just another way to get to Settings | Accounts

Edit: To clarify the problem at this point -

I brought the phone up to the point where your screenshot above was and I hit the "Remove account" button at the bottom. The account appeared to be removed successfully. I then hit "Add account" on the screen right before that, selected Facebook, and was given the error message above that the account already exists, even though it doesn't.

[CJM]

That's weird...the social networking app was a preinstalled app.

I think that's the difference between my original droid and her droid x. That's why we don't have the same options. I never had that app preinstalled on my phone.



Tapped from an Unbrickable DROID

[mtuchris]

I had a similar problem when I tried to change my password. Here is the link to the thread with the solution that worked for me:

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/tec...-accounts.html


good luck

Edit: I did this on my droid 2

[KCraig]

Just fixed this issue today on my rooted Droid 3 Android version 2.3.4

I had removed the built in social networking app but while troubleshooting this i decided to reinstall it. After reinstalling the social networking app i opened it and hit configure, after it loaded through some stuff it brought me to a page to add accounts that looks just like the page when you go to Settings>Accounts but when i clicked on the facebook app with the little green check mark from this page it not only said that there is already an account so i couldn't add one but it asked me if i wanted to remove the existing one, I said yes. Then went back to the regular Settings>Accounts and was able to re add my facebook account. Then I just removed the built in social networking app again and all is good.