problem syncing with google contacts

LouD

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I'm going nuts trying to understand how synching works with the Verizon motorola droid. Initially I loaded my contacts into it via Datapilot, similar to what they do at the Verizon store. Assumed they would "sync" with the relevant Google account. Nada for a week.
I started messing with the thing yesterday, figuring I'd export the data and load it directly into Google. Well, in the middle of fooling around with various settings, I must have done something--the google account locked up for about an hour. Without any intervention on my part, when it came back, my contacts from the phone were now on Google contacts.
Well fine and dandy, I edited the contacts on Google to remove duplicates (nice feature there) then went into my Outlook address book and exported some additional contacts (email) as a CSV file. That loaded nicely into gmail contacts. A little more manual editing, and gmail merged data from duplicate names, so I now have all the relevant phone numbers and email addresses under the same name.
Now, however, I can't get the Google data back down to the phone. Left sync on overnight. Nothing. Tried forcing sync. Nothing. Turned off sync, tried manual sync, no go.
I'm also sorta puzzled by the Droid's behavior. I thought I couldn't upload a contact list to a blank Google contact list, and that default behavior was to download from Google to the Droid. Obviously it can work both ways.
Any suggestions? Is there a good faq somewhere that explains in detail how syncing works?
Thanks in advance.
 

jsh1120

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It sounds like you're pretty skilled in this area. There are a bunch of help pages dealing with syncing on the google help pages. If you haven't read through them, you should. Just be aware that things can get very confusing if you get into the category of "google apps," the enterprise level email solution (and other functionality) that Google markets to businesses.

Try going to the help pages from your google email account on the web.

P.S. Sorry if I'm pointing out the obvious to you.
 

mwhartman

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You have spent a significant amount of time on this issue. I'm not sure if my suggestion will work but, on your phone, try logging out and back into your Google account.

Mike
 
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LouD

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The fallacy of misplaced trust in expertise

I found this link:

The problem in part appears to be social engineering. If you're a new customer and start with an empty phone and your contacts data in gmail, you seem to have few problems.

But SOP for some of the Verizon sales centers is to transfer old phone numbers to new phones via a pc, usb and proprietary software, which is what I did at home. Somehow this seems to be screwing up the file format in a way that confuses the sycro function of Gmail contacts, causing it to behave erratically.

When I finally got all my data into Gmail in the form I wanted, I completely cleared the Droid's memory of gmail and contacts per the discussion in the link, then resynced. Works like a charm now.

What Verizon needs is a some kind of software fix that will let them transfer data from their proprietary backup manager directly into Gmail contacts.
 

jsh1120

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I found this link:

The problem in part appears to be social engineering. If you're a new customer and start with an empty phone and your contacts data in gmail, you seem to have few problems.

But SOP for some of the Verizon sales centers is to transfer old phone numbers to new phones via a pc, usb and proprietary software, which is what I did at home. Somehow this seems to be screwing up the file format in a way that confuses the sycro function of Gmail contacts, causing it to behave erratically.

When I finally got all my data into Gmail in the form I wanted, I completely cleared the Droid's memory of gmail and contacts per the discussion in the link, then resynced. Works like a charm now.

What Verizon needs is a some kind of software fix that will let them transfer data from their proprietary backup manager directly into Gmail contacts.

Good catch, LouD. When my wife got her droid a couple of weeks ago VZW offered to "sync" her contacts from her old phone to the Droid. But most of my wife's contacts were on her Outlook account and I suspected I might run into problems trying to sync into gmail from two sources so I passed on the offer and simply synched her Outlook contacts to gmail. Glad I did.
 

vico512

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Glad I saw this thread. I spent a bunch of time editing my G-Mail contacts on the PC, but saw no resultant changes on the Droid. G-Mail sync has been checked on the Droid since I got it, approx. a month ago. So, I unchecked the Sync button on my G-Mail acct on the Droid, then re-checked it. After the spinning wheel went away, everything showed up correctly.

I'm not sure why it didn't do it automatically, but the end result was OK.

-Vic
 
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