Gmail Contacts Sync Issue

[adammschwarz]

My phone will not Sync with my Gmail Contacts anymore. It was working fine the first night I got my phone, but ever since it is constantly trying to Sync. It apparently never can and keeps trying continously. This is a problem because A) it's not Syncing and B) I cannot receive incoming phone calls when the Sync Icon is showing in my notification bar. I have disabled Contacts from Syncing, but would like to Sync them back up since I made numerous changes online and want my phone to be up to date with all the correct information.

Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas?

[evilh]

I have this same problem except it only started this morning. Best as I can figure it was because I was making changes to contacts on the phone and through gmail on my laptop at the same time. Powering the phone on and off seems to fix this until I fire up gmail on a computer. Going to go see if that is indeed the problem.

[evilh]

So I powered off the phone, powered it back on and let it sit for a bit. No syncing. Signed into gmail on my computer sent an email. No issues. Opening contacts and not doing anything also causes no issues. Editing contacts in gmail triggers the endless syncing. Turning syncing off and back on doesn't fix anything. Thus far only power cycling the phone gets it to stop.

EDIT: Not even power cycling works now. Only disabling contact sync.

[New World]

So I powered off the phone, powered it back on and let it sit for a bit. No syncing. Signed into gmail on my computer sent an email. No issues. Opening contacts and not doing anything also causes no issues. Editing contacts in gmail triggers the endless syncing. Turning syncing off and back on doesn't fix anything. Thus far only power cycling the phone gets it to stop.

EDIT: Not even power cycling works now. Only disabling contact sync.

Sounds identical to my situation. Contacts syncing worked great the first few days, now it looks like you and I are having the same issue :confused:

[atlantis309]

Same problem here. My contacts synced the first time I signed into my Gmail account and haven't been able to sync since then. It's not a deal breaker for me at this point but it needs to be addressed...

[mikef1182]

I am haveing the same issue, but with my calendar. Hopefully the OTA update clears these issues up. If the G1 isnt going to sync USB to my computer, than the google sync better work perfect and it doesn't.

[Mugzy]

Add another with the same issue.

[mkhyper1]

I'm having the same issue with it constantly Sync'ing with eMail. I closed out of all my Google Web applications including GMail on the computer and restarted. This did not help. 1 minute after I restarted, it kicked off the next Sync and ran forever.

Does anyone know if there is an official support forum to post these kind of issues? Or, should I call T-Mobile (which will probably be a waste of time)?

[marvin]

Same issue here, my phone shows the last sync was on 10-25-08. So it worked well for 4 days!
I turned off the contact sync today, that way it won't keep trying to sync all the time. I think this is better because I have found that at times incoming calls are routed to voicemail if the phone is trying to sync in 2G. Might save a little juice on the battery too!

[Justice Penguin]

Are there any new developments on this? I really like my G1, but this issue is killing me. Not only does it kill my battery, but I feel like sometimes I can't receive incoming calls. I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile for this phone, but if this issue is not resolved within my 30-day switch period, I might have to cancel the contract.

[staticnothing]

I'm having the same issue here too... the contacts haven't updated since 10/24 according to the sync page. I'm wondering if there's some kind of work around here, like deleting all the contacts on the phone and letting it sync from the server again? Sounds too risky though... I'll probably just wait and hope a patch comes along to fix it.

[JPH3]

I was having the same issue with Calendar not synching. Eventually did a hard reset and every synched up. No problems since.

[shookyang]

I posted this before, but had yet to hear a response from anyone else. Here's the issue I'm having:

I was having a similar problem on the 24th when I was at the airport and updating my contacts via my phone.

It was weird, it was not updating my contacts (said there was a sync problem) for certain people (specifically, existing male friends...female friends, new contacts from either gender, and family from both genders were updating normally).

I can see that the contacts on my Gmail account were being updated
with the exception of the male friends' contact info. If I make
changes to the Gmail contact info, it gets updated and pushed out to
my phone (2 nights ago, the sync error message on the phone went away
and it even updated earlier yesterday morning). It also merged new contact
information for users that I entered on the phone (like an email
address). However, when I tried to make some changes on my phone
again, the sync problems started happening again.

Also, what is up with the check mark when you add new people sometimes? Is there a way to remove it? It appeared after I added a new contact for someone, and it won't go away. I can only see it when I click on that person's contact profile and it takes me to a list of phone numbers and SMS options.

[staticnothing]

FYI, I managed to find a sort of cause, and workaround, for this problem. I went through all of my contacts in my phone, and compared them to my online contacts. I found the contact who hadn't managed to sync with the server was one that I had changed the NAME of in my phone (I had added a last name w/in my contacts in android). So she completely failed to update on the server, and my phone continued to say "failed to sync." I tried just deleting her from the phone, but still couldn't sync until I deleted her from the online contacts too.

So, basically just find the offending entry, and delete it on phone and server. Sync, and then re add the entry.

Hope that can help someone else. I would bug report this, but I don't know how.

[shookyang]

I resolved my issue about an hour ago.

To give some additional background to my problem, I had thought that I could assign ringtones to groups that I created on my Gmail account. I had divided everyone into separate groups, but the only one that I started adding people to was a list that I created for male friends. When I found out I couldn't add ringtones to groups, I deleted this group without removing everyone from the group first. Apparently, Android doesn't know what to do when this happens and it locked out all updates to those specific contacts.

I ended up recreating the group, adding the same people, removed them from the group, and then deleted the group (after I confirmed on the phone that they still weren't in their original group).

This resolved the issue.

[MyTeacherIsAnAndroid]

I was having the same issue, my phone hadnt sync-ed since nov 5. I was getting the red exclamation point and a little dialogue box saying syncing is currently experiencing problems try again later. I called tmobile customer care today to try to resolve the problem.

We went through all the possibilities, changing it to 2g only, changing the network address for tmobile us, taking out the battery, and nothing worked.

So we ended up having to do a factory reset (you can find it through the settings) and deleted everything and rebooted. But before we did this, she had me go to gmail on my laptop and write in the unsaved changes. I started looking around and all my contacts had indeed sync-ed, the phone just wasnt acknowledging it.

The rep said that the most probable cause of the glitch was an app which had access to contact information. The only one that I found so far in the process of bringing my android back the way I want it was AnyCut, and it seems the likely culprit as I installed it at about the time the syncing became an issue.

I hope this helps those of you still experiencing this issue.

[shlongwoodian]

this happened IMMEDIATELY after attempting to test POP settings for a friend's friend. i deleted that account info (and hadn't used the "EMail" app prior to this moment) and presumed Gmail would be fine.

i noticed emails coming in, yet i was no longer seeing notifications immediately (as i have been). i checked "Data Synchronization" settings and noticed "Auto-synch" was off/disabled. i re-enabled this and forced synch of all three - Gmail, Calendar and Contacts.

Gmail has been spinning its wheels since then. the little two-arrow icon has been rotating in "Data Synchronization" settings as well as my Taskbar.

i have soft-booted my phone (press and hold dial (green phone) + menu + end (red phone) buttons) as well as power cycling the phone. i have cleared "Data" for this application as well, via Manage Applications, for both Gmail and Gmail storage.

i can connect to Gmail via the app and manually refresh. i'll post back when i get to the bottom of this.

[jrokwitdacapitals18]

Yea I keep getting the errror message too now.

[shlongwoodian]

that fixed it for me folks. once i cleared data for both gmail and gmail data, that seems to have fixed it. i say that not recklessly, but knowing that only the following happened:

- used only gmail from day 1
- setup pop for a friend to test
- deleted account
- turned auto-synch back on
- rebooted (no change)
- cleared data for both

all good now! i am NOT resetting SQUAT - that is a hose and close my friend.

[scrannel]

Have you checked this out?

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1453078&page=2&pp=15

[shlongwoodian]

yeah, i think the main point is, wiping the phone is not a fix. it's better to find out what the issue was and how to truly respond to it. i can say that no matter what i did, the synch would just spin its wheels. for whatever reason, once i cleared all "data," it synched.

maybe something got chewed up in android when i added another email account...don't know.

i would be hesitant to just wipe my phone though - doesn't that seem a bit lazy in the troubleshooting department? i know there's a point in time where ya just have to go, "how much of my time is this worth," but it can only be one of a few things. i would recommend trying what i did and/or what scrannel suggested. they might be the same really. i wiped that 4 MB of data that was used for "Gmail Storage" - so that's possibly the same. and why backup? it all just came right back down from Gmail again.

good luck!

[zag213]

Possible contact sync resolution

Here is how i finally resolved my issue with my contacts not syncing with my phone.
I exported my gmail contacts to a gmail csv file, then i deleted all the contacts from my gmail account and then imported the file i just exported. Then i was able to sync my contacts.
I think there was some conflict between changes i made in my phones address book and changes i made in my google contacts.
Hope this works for the rest of you.

[tiki]

Yup- what he just said.

I back up my contacts using MyBackup to my SDCard just in case

AND I back them up from time to time from my desktop to both google format and outlook format files.

Then, depending on how the sync is screwing with me in the future, I'll be prepared.

But I never RESTORE my phone contacts from the SDCard using MyBackup anymore. I save them, but never restore from them. If i wiped my phone, i just let it grab the contacts from google.

I only save them to the SDCard using my backup as an extra precaution.

In fact, I wish that MyBackup would allow us to save the contacts to the SDCArd as a CSV File as well..

then i could use my desktop to reimport them directly into gmail... thats a good idea..

[Hawhoo]

Same Issue here :(

I have two records that do not sync from the G1 back to Google mail.
All others seem to work just fine in both dierections
A little frustrating if you can not rely on your work tools ......