Contacts/Mails sync questions

[LaughingJohn]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone could answer these questions?

1. Are the various contact syncs one way? Maybe I'm missing something, but if I add a contact to gmail then it syncs to the phone, however if I add or amend a contact in the phone it does not sync back to Gmail. This also appears to be true with ActiveSync to Exchange.

2. Assuming the answer to the above question is "yes, it's one way", if I add a contact to my phone how can I copy to Gmail/Exchange??

3. Am I correct that unlike touchdown the HTC Activesync client does handle push emails? When I had touchdown installed I'd get an alert as soon as a mail came in (often before Outlook), but now I've moved to the inbuilt app it seems to only sync every 15 minutes. This would seem to make having an email conversation in near-real time impossible?

3. Facebook handily contains peoples birthdays but these do not get added to the calendar. Is there a way of adding them (preferably to the gmail calendar).

4. There appears to be no built in security in the Activesync/mail application. This isn't ideal for enterprise mail, anyone have any ideas apart from locking the phone?

Ta,
LJ

 

[bodger]

1 - It is two ways, mine syncs as soon as I change something, but it'll obviously depend on your signal at the time. I'm pretty sure the phone creates a queue and will update as and when possible.

3 - You can change the 15 minute setting to 'As items arrive'. To do this, go to the menu, click Settings, Data Synchronization, Exchange ActiveSync, Schedule. Scroll up and you'll see 'As items arrive'. This is likely to use more battery though.

4 - I don't think there's a way to put birthdays on the calendar, but they will appear in updates in the 'People' menu.

5 - Security for ActiveSync to Exchange is provided from your web access. If you login, go to options, then mobile devices, you'll see there's the option to select your device and wipe all the data. I'd turn on screen lock on the phone, and use this if you ever do have a problem.

Hope that helps!

Dean

 

[LaughingJohn]

bodger, excellent answers, thank you very much for that.

Maybe I had just assumed that the update to gmail contacts didn't work. I'm still not sure how you create a new one though. The contact types it gives me are Exchange, SIM and Phone. How do I create a new Gmail contact? Does a phone contact get added to Gmail, because it doesn't seem to be

Thanks for the 'As Items Arrive' info, I just hadn't realised the list scrolled so couldn't see it.

LJ.

 

[bodger]

Hi John,

No problem!

I see where the confusion is with the contacts now. When you create a new contact, you choose from the drop down where the contact will sync/be saved to. So you can create (as you said) an Exchange, Google, SIM or Phone contact.

Exchange and Google will then sync to the relevant site. All contacts will still show up in the people application, and you can still link them to Facebook. (Just make sure the view settings are correct - People > Menu > View).

Not sure about having them sync to both sites. I guess you'd have to create 2 separate contacts.

Don't forget that it syncs both ways as well.

Dean

 

[LaughingJohn]

I don't have Google as an option in the list of contact types, only Sim, Phone and Exchange.

 

[bodger]

Oh, strange.

Go to Menu > Settings > Data Synchronisation

Does Google come up on the list there? If so, choose Google and make sure all the options are ticked (Mail, Calendar, Contacts).

If not, I'm guessing your phone is from Orange on T-Mobile? I'd get in touch and let them know.

 

[LaughingJohn]

Yeah, it is strange, I think that's why I was so confused. I checked the sync settings and everything else seems ok. Contacts seem to be syncing from Gmail OK.

I've opened a ticket with HTC and will post when I get any information worth sharing.

Thanks again for your time.

 

[cawhitworth]

Yeah, it is strange, I think that's why I was so confused. I checked the sync settings and everything else seems ok. Contacts seem to be syncing from Gmail OK.

I've opened a ticket with HTC and will post when I get any information worth sharing.

Thanks again for your time.

I've had exactly the same issue with my new Hero, and have also contacted HTC about it. It's really quite annoying.

 

[LaughingJohn]

I did a hard reset in the end (as advised by HTC) and all is OK now! They advised me to use a different google account, but I just used the same one.

 

[danijelsh]

i need to sync my 380 google contacts from phone to gmail account. phone sync crashes all the time, and i am unable to back up the contacts this way. any advice?

 

[petefoth]

Get the vCardIO app from the market vcardio | All | By date, Androlib, Android Applications and Games

Use it to export your contacts to a vCard (.vcf) file on the SD card

Copy the vCard file to a PC or Mac

In your browser go to Google mail | Contacts

Import the vCard file.

If that succeeds, delete all the contacts on the phone (in the People app. Don't delete the vCard file until you're sure everything has worked , then sync with Google.

Alternatively, if all you want is a backup of your contacts then vCardIO will do that also.

Regards

Pete

 

[danijelsh]

Pete, thanks for your response. I've managed to do a similar thing: I found an app on the market (it's called ExportContacts), which just, as it says, exports all the contacts into a single csv file. Now, since I'm not able to use a pc and outlook for syncing purposes, I am unable to check if some info wasn't exported (for example, non of the birthdays were transferred, I didn't have a lot of them,but still...). So, I don't know if the birthday info was lost during exporting from Hero, or during importing into Gmail, but this really doesn't matter much to me, as all the phone numbers are there.

The next issue I encountered was that google synchronizes All Contacts, not My Contacs, which is really unnecessary, because in this tab the email addresses from which you received or sent to, are automatically added. It would be nice if you could choose your Hero to sync only with a specific group (e.g. My contacs, Work, Family; and more options in here would be appreciated: say you have contacts in your phone, but just want to import the ones you have from "Work", not sync - merge it all on both phone and gmail), and it would be nice if gmail contacts were a bit more customizable, for example, to filter out the difference between my contacts and all contacts (that's that auto-added mail address), and easily delete them, and then do the "clean" sync part.

The only solution for now (for me, at least), is that you sync carefully, then turn off auto sync for contacts (on your phone), and when you want to sync again with gmail, you first go to gmail, delete all the garbage that you don't need (export my contacts, delete all contacts, import back my contacts), then turn on auto sync on your phone, and allow it to sync to google with new contacts that you added over the time period in between.

I hope you understood what I meant, and I apologize for the long post. Cheers!

BIG EDIT: I discovered just a minute ago, that when you go to people app/groups tab/press menu/sync groups, you can check what groups are synced, and you can choose whether All contacts, My contacs or both are synced (or some other groups if you have created them). This solves my problem completely! It was just a bit "not easy to find" setting.