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Android Sync w/ Mac (10.4.11) via Address Book

j-raj

Lurker
Jan 6, 2010
5
0
I searched a little, but I wasn't able to find the right thread for my question, so I decided to start a new thread... so, my apologies in advance, if there is a thread about this already started.

So... Just got the HTC Eris and transfered my contacts from my old BlackBerry to the new Eris. Everything's there, actually way more than I need (over 3970 contacts, many duplicates and such. I realize that there is the 'delete duplicates' function on Gmail's contacts page, but sync'ing of that many contacts to go back and edit the contacts that I would like to keep on the phone, has really slowed down the phone, eaten battery big-time and in 3-4 days only 501 contacts have come across. I really don't need that many and was only planning on having the people I call on a daily basis.

UGH!

So, I turned off the sync function on the phone and the phone is running a bit better, but having to scroll or search through that many contacts is a pain in the butt and takes for ever to do.

I would like to find a sync conduit (that works with my PowerBook Mac running Tiger 10.4.11) that I could sync via USB my contacts off of this phone, edit the ones to keep, re-populate (replace) the contacts. At this point I would just turn on the phone sync function(with the fewer contacts) and let them populate Gmail.

How is this possible?

Many of the suggested downloads I have seen online haven't really stated that they work with my Mac OS.

Is there a faster way to have the contacts sync'd up to gmail and maybe just edit everything up there on line?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
The best way I can think of to sync everything would be to export all your contacts from Address Book to a group vCard... Gmail will import vcard contacts, so you could do that, and then sync all your google contacts online.

But, that would mean you would have to spend the time to go through ALL your gmail contacts and delete the ones you don't want/duplicates, etc. It's a pain in the ass (and it took me a solid 5 hours), but it's worth it: i have much less clutter both on my phone, and in my gmail account. Addresses I haven't used for years no longer pop up. And, I could turn on the syncing of google contacts again, and it is somewhat reassuring to know that any contact I add to my phone will be remembered by my gmail, synced wirelessly and more or less instantly, even if I lose/trash/whatever my phone.

Anyway, that's my two cents... I haven't yet tried importing vcards to gmail contacts, I just know it's an option (once imported some contacts via CSV from a buddy's outlook).

Good luck, sorry I couldn't suggest a more direct route.
 
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Is there a way in g-mail to create a group of contacts who you want to sync with your phone, and have the rest in your g-mail contacts, but not synced with your phone. I thought I remembered seeing something about this with 2.x, but now can not find it.

-spg

I think that there is a way to designate on Gmail the contacts to transfer, but how can I wipe the contacts on my phone with out totally knocking the phone back to factory settings?

I wish I could just import just the Vcards I wanted (which would be significantly lower than what I have on here).

If I have a empty phone (contacts-wise), would Gmail populate contacts that I just load up there?


... I guess I'm just looking for alternatives.
 
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I think that there is a way to designate on Gmail the contacts to transfer, but how can I wipe the contacts on my phone with out totally knocking the phone back to factory settings?

I wish I could just import just the Vcards I wanted (which would be significantly lower than what I have on here).

If I have a empty phone (contacts-wise), would Gmail populate contacts that I just load up there?


... I guess I'm just looking for alternatives.

Yes, if you have an empty phone, and you turn synchronization with google contacts on, your empty contact list will be populated with EVERY contact in your gmail account. there should be a way to selectively sync (like, say, only sync the "My contacts," and not "all contacts." But I haven't figured out how to do it. Like I said, I just had to spend an afternoon deleting info I no longer needed.

As to how to delete contacts without re-setting phone to factory original:

open up contacts, hit menu, select "delete contacts," close down the keyboard and hit menu again, and hit "select all," then delete... that's it!

just make sure you still have google contacts syncing turned off before you do this, or you'll turn around and find your phone re-populated with all the contacts you may be trying to get rid of.

ALSO: before I did anything, i exported my contacts from my google account, just for a backup, because I'd read of some guy who was trying to do this, and somehow ended up wiping ALL his gmail contacts out. no idea how you can manage to do that, but just as a safeguard, export your gmail contacts to a CSV.
 
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Yes, if you have an empty phone, and you turn synchronization with google contacts on, your empty contact list will be populated with EVERY contact in your gmail account. there should be a way to selectively sync (like, say, only sync the "My contacts," and not "all contacts." But I haven't figured out how to do it. Like I said, I just had to spend an afternoon deleting info I no longer needed.

As to how to delete contacts without re-setting phone to factory original:

open up contacts, hit menu, select "delete contacts," close down the keyboard and hit menu again, and hit "select all," then delete... that's it!

just make sure you still have google contacts syncing turned off before you do this, or you'll turn around and find your phone re-populated with all the contacts you may be trying to get rid of.

ALSO: before I did anything, i exported my contacts from my google account, just for a backup, because I'd read of some guy who was trying to do this, and somehow ended up wiping ALL his gmail contacts out. no idea how you can manage to do that, but just as a safeguard, export your gmail contacts to a CSV.


That is the plan... I just tested exporting a group vCard and not individual vCard, it totally worked. So, I'm cool there. That rocks and I'm going to be able to do this easier than I thought.

Now the problem is... When I went to "Select All", the phone froze up hard core and gave me an error message "Activity People (in process android.process.acore) is not responding. It asks me if I would like to 'Force Quit' or 'Wait', after hitting wait a few times, I gave up on that.

I guess now that the contacts in many cases has turned 3974 contacts to 7948 contacts, or maybe more, due to my syncing conundrum, might be a big action for it to take.

What do I do? I really have worked on configuring the rest of the phone (apps, windows, setting up my email accts, etc...), it would be a bummer to wipe the phone clean at this point, just to wipe off the contacts.

Is there another way to wipe just contacts?
 
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Oy! You're much more popular than I am, apparently :) I only had to wipe about 700 useless contacts... I didn't think that 3,000 or more might create problems.

My advice would be to search the app store for a backup program... I know they're out there. I don't know how they work I understand some store info on your SD card, others store the info on their own servers wirelessly... worth checking out. Don't know if you could do it with a free program, or if you'd have to splurge for a few bucks for a paid app.

However, you'd have to make sure the backup program didn't back up your contacts, because then you'd be right back where you started from.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you can do... good luck!
 
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Oy! You're much more popular than I am, apparently :) I only had to wipe about 700 useless contacts... I didn't think that 3,000 or more might create problems.

My advice would be to search the app store for a backup program... I know they're out there. I don't know how they work I understand some store info on your SD card, others store the info on their own servers wirelessly... worth checking out. Don't know if you could do it with a free program, or if you'd have to splurge for a few bucks for a paid app.

However, you'd have to make sure the backup program didn't back up your contacts, because then you'd be right back where you started from.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you can do... good luck!

LOL, 90% of those contacts were trade show (music industry), I just want the 200+ that are people that I'm really in contact with on a day to day basis...

Well I'm not worried about backing up of my contacts, because I had them backed up from my old BlackBerry (on my Mac in AdressBook), the day that I went to the store to purchase the Eris.

...But, it would be cool if there was an app that could back up and remember the settings, backgrounds and acct prefs.

I'll search on the app market.
 
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