Cant pair vivoactive 3 with phone. Says already paired.

From the Vivoactive user manual:

"To set up the vívoactive^® 3 device, it must be paired directly through the Garmin Connect app, instead of from the Bluetooth^® settings on your smartphone."

Read the details here: https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/vivoactive3/EN-US/GUID-212A63C3-A674-4535-89A0-2CA68EAABF0F.html

I suspect the original poster, as myself, is indeed attempting to pair through the app. The issue remains. Following the troubleshooting video I have unpaired the watch from the phone and tried pairing anew. The app goes into pairing mode, but the watch declares it is already paired and the app eventually declares the pairing is a failure. 

I'm now having this issue as well, did you get it to work or have to a full reset on the watch?  

Before re-pairing the watch to the phone, you may need to delete the pairing from the Bluetooth properties on the phone, and also you need to remove the current device from Garmin Connect. Only then you'll be abe to re-pair it.

However, trying to fix connectivity problems by removing the pairing, and re-pairing it, is not the way to handle it. The pairing is practically certainly not the problem. Before removing an existing paring, or an existing device, I'd rather suggest trying all the tips from the Sync / Connection Troubleshooting Guide 

i deleted it all - did a factory reset on the watch and it did then pair. it was a bit of a pain but all the data is in my strava feed so nothing really lost. just means you have to set up things again. 

same here.  The watch insists on repairing once it is not connected to the phone for a couple of days. This is a genuine nuisance and indicates a selective customer focus by Gamin.

Sometimes it works with disconnect / re-pairing but not now. Factory rest means that I lose the run I just did, disappointing again.  (and yes, I pair through the app in case you wonder.... )

I'd expect a better quality testing from Garmin, accepting that users might use garmin selectively, not 24/7 and sometime not for some time.  - and yet, hope for a hint for re-pairing without wiping everything...

Delete the watch from the list of Bluetooth devices. 

if it would have been that easy then i wouldn't have asked ;-) done that, the watch still thinks it's paired, back to square one....

Thank you for the instructions. The easy part occurred again today. The instructions helped, at least for that subset of the cases where i could get the watch to flash a BT-PIN code. (the easy half of my challenges) The real challenge is those times where the watch thinks it is paired - and I can't even get it to flash a BT-PIN.