Gmail Contacts?

[MrGibbage]

Well? How did you do it?

[divestoclimb]

Export/import is not an ideal long-term solution since you will want to be able to synchronize, i.e. if you change a single entry on your PC and then change another entry on your phone (like adding a new number) one of those changes would have to be destroyed if your only way to synchronize is via exports and imports. I'm surprised Google doesn't have a sync app that does this since they have one for Outlook<->gCalendar.

[heyitsnan]

I read that if you enter your contacts online, in your Google mail app, the G1 syncs "over the air" so your contact list will always be up-to-date. Is this right?

[divestoclimb]

Originally Posted by heyitsnan

I read that if you enter your contacts online, in your Google mail app, the G1 syncs "over the air" so your contact list will always be up-to-date. Is this right?

That's my understanding of how all the personal data works on the phone by default.

[MrGibbage]

I agree, import/export is meant to be a one-time effort. Do it to get your contacts out of t-bird and into the cloud. After that, do your best to do everything in google. You can use that program I pointed to earlier which lets you see your gmail contacts and calendar in tbird (and outlook), but I don't think it really works if, say you create a new contact in tbird and want to push it to gmail. It's more of a lens into the gmail contact list--read only. Yeah, it would be great if someone (g?) wrote some really good sync apps, but if it hasn't happened yet, they must have a business reason for not doing it. So I guess it's up to us to do it.

[LordKurgan]

I've found a few free and shareware apps that seem to solve the sync issue. I think I have found one Gmail issue. The contact book that the G1 sync's with seems to be the gmail contact list. Every contact sync program I've tried with gmail wont take a contact that doesn't have a email account with it. Which makes total sense for gmail. When you use gmail as your phone contact list you come up with a big issue. Most people that using the G1 will have lots of contacts without email address because its a phone.

[MrGibbage]

Using my method of manually editing the csv file, I exported/imported records with phone numbers only as well as entries with only comments (I put entries in for things like frequent flyer membership numbers and such). They all imported just fine.

[LordKurgan]

Originally Posted by MrGibbage

Using my method of manually editing the csv file, I exported/imported records with phone numbers only as well as entries with only comments (I put entries in for things like frequent flyer membership numbers and such). They all imported just fine.

hmm maybe its only an API issue then. All the apps I tired did the sync right into gmail

[LordKurgan]

Well I've seem to have found what has been cause the issue I've been having with importing my contacts from outlook into gmail using a CSV. Gmail uses to "Naming" formats for CSV files. One with "Name" which includes first and last name in one field. The second is "First Name" & "Last Name" which is the format that Outlook uses. It seems if you use the "First Name" & Last Name" as the format and there is no Last Name it won't import the ones without a last name correctly. Now I just need to figure out how to merg first and last name into one field and it should work just fine.

[MrGibbage]

You can use something like this:
=CONCATENATE(A1," ",B1)
Make a new column, call it "Name". Put this formula in every cell. Make sure that A1 points to the first name and B1 points to the last name.