How do you sync contacts and calendars between a Mac and Nexus 7?

[douglerner]

It seems there are still many things I'm not able to sync between my iMac and my Nexus 7, and I'm confused about how to do it.

On my Nexus 7 in the People app there are lots of my contacts. I don't know how the data was populated. Yet it's not all the contacts I currently have on my Mac.

Meanwhile, the Calendar on my Nexus 7 seems to be empty, except for some holidays.

On my Mac, I did add my Google account to the Calendar app though.

So, simply speaking, what must I do to make sure calendar events and people contacts sync?

I read a few "complete guides to syncing Android with Macs" online, but I guess they weren't complete enough for me.

Thanks,

doug

 

[Scott Kenyon]

Hey again, Doug! I'm not totally sure about calendars with Mac. You could use Google Calendar from the web, but it won't work if you enjoy using the one you've been using. I'll ask my peers to see if one of them can come post a solution for that. As far as contacts go, they're your Google account contacts. Anyone you see in your gmail/contacts will automatically populate to your phone. If you plan on continuing to use Android, I'd recommend you add in everyone from your Mac to your GMail.

 

[douglerner]

Hey again, Doug! I'm not totally sure about calendars with Mac. You could use Google Calendar from the web, but it won't work if you enjoy using the one you've been using. I'll ask my peers to see if one of them can come post a solution for that. As far as contacts go, they're your Google account contacts. Anyone you see in your gmail/contacts will automatically populate to your phone. If you plan on continuing to use Android, I'd recommend you add in everyone from your Mac to your GMail.

Yes, after I posted my message I realized "Aha. It must be because I've sent email to those people from one of my Gmail accounts at some point in my life."

So as for syncing, the calendar remains a mystery. Inside Mac Calendar there is actually a place to add your Gmail Calendar account address and password, but I don't see anything sync over. It could be confusion about where the calendars reside. For example, maybe I have to move them from iCloud specifically to the Google calendar. Too sleepy to try now, but I'll try in the morning.

Thanks,

doug

 

[Scott Kenyon]

I have asked another ambassador to look into it, as he uses a Mac. I'm not familiar with how iCloud and Google would sync, so I can't be of much use. He'll get over here when he has had a look at it. There must be some sort of sharing setting in iCloud to share the calendar to an external source.

 

[KarlDag]

Your Nexus 7's calendar uses Google Calendar.

Follow these simple instructions to sync your Google account in your Mac's Calendar app: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/99358?hl=en&ref_topic=13949

 

[douglerner]

Your Nexus 7's calendar uses Google Calendar.

Follow these simple instructions to sync your Google account in your Mac's Calendar app: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/99358?hl=en&ref_topic=13949

I'm afraid after doing that I'm not seeing any of the events in the Calendar on my Mac show up in my calendar on my Nexus. Actually, that's I what I tried before. I set the account.

I suspect there is a disconnect somewhere in that on my Mac the calendars are listed under iCloud and there is an entirely different section for calendars under Google.

doug

 

[douglerner]

I think I've basically figured it out. I need to export the iCloud calendars and then import them into a Google calendar and then just turn off the iCloud calendars. It seems you can do this on the Mac and on the iOS devices.

But not everything imported, so some events are missing when I look on the Nexus or the iPhone after doing that, even though I see them on my Mac.

doug

 

[douglerner]

Could you clarify one thing for me. In Calendar on the Mac and in iOS I can have multiple calendars with different labels - like Work, Home, Urgent, etc.

For the Google calendars is is basically one calendar for each Google account?

If so, I should do some export/import of my multiple calendars first in iCloud and merge them that way into one, and then export that and import it into a Google calendar.

I wonder what I will be losing, besides some color labeling I wasn't paying attention to anyway.

Well, I always have the backup exports if I want to revert.

doug

 

[douglerner]

Hmm... Basically it's sort of a mess so far. I did find where you can create multiple calendars in a single Google account, so I thought the easiest thing would be a one-to-one export of each of my iCloud calendars followed by an import to a Google calendar of the same name.

The data seems to be SLOWLY coming in to my Nexus, iPhone and iPad that way. But I had to turn off Google calendars in the Calendar app on my map because of endless errors about this or that - not being able to revert to daylight savings time, and a bunch of other things. So all my mobile devices are apparently syncing right now, but my Mac itself is still on just iCloud because of the Google account errors.

Not sure what to do.

doug

 

[douglerner]

The Google calendars have synced with my iPhone and iPad already, but they still haven't finished syncing with my Nexus!

Sent from my Nexus 7 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[douglerner]

Calendars finally synced with my Nexus 7. I don't know why it took so much longer to sync with the nexus than it did to sync with the iPhone and iPad. Now if I can only get my Mac calendar to sync with the Google calendars without zillions of errors all the calendars will be synced everywhere.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using AC Forums mobile app

 

[FitzAusTex]

I'll try to look into this. I originally had everything in Windows Outlook (on a work pc) that I synced via Palm to my mac's Entourage. I then synced that data into iCal. This was all 5+ years ago. I never really used iCal as my main calendar, just used Entourage, until it became Mac Outlook. DotMac/Mobile Me were involved for a long time, too.

At any rate, I've somehow got my calendar(s) synced, but I may very well have two calendars - one iCal, and one Google. Can't recall if I was ever able to merge all into one. Not in front of my Mac at the moment, to look, but I will.

Posted via Android Central App

 

[Scott Kenyon]

Thanks Fitz. I really wish I owned a Mac right now.

 

[douglerner]

I waited a couple of hours after things "settled down" and then added the Google account back to Calendar on my Mac. Everything populated fine, it seems, so now I have all the same calendar content as I did before on iCloud, but instead the calendars are in Google so they sync between Google on the web, my Mac, my Nexus 7, my iPhone 5 and my iPad.

One more item off the to-do list!

doug

 

[FitzAusTex]

I waited a couple of hours after things "settled down" and then added the Google account back to Calendar on my Mac. Everything populated fine, it seems, so now I have all the same calendar content as I did before on iCloud, but instead the calendars are in Google so they sync between Google on the web, my Mac, my Nexus 7, my iPhone 5 and my iPad.

One more item off the to-do list!

doug

What I'm curious about is if your Google calendar items merged into your "apple" calendars , or if you have a separate Google calendar?

Posted via Android Central App

 

[douglerner]

What I'm curious about is if your Google calendar items merged into your "apple" calendars , or if you have a separate Google calendar?

Posted via Android Central App

It's very unified with the Apple stuff.

On my Mac I am just using the standard OS X Calendar app. In preferences I just added the Google account. It appears that both iCloud and Google are calDAV services - so they work the same way. In the Calendar app, in the left pane, there is a section for the iCloud calendars and the Google calendars. I just unchecked the iCloud calendars and checked the Google calendars. So I'm seeing the same content as I was before, in the same app, but now via the Google server instead of the iCloud server.

And it's the same for the Calendar on the iPhone and iPad. In Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars I went into my Google email account settings and just flipped the switch for Calendars to ON. And in iCloud (another account there) I switched the Calendars to OFF. And similarly for the iPad.

So I'm using the same apps I was on my Mac, iPhone and iPad - the standard Calendar app.

So it turns out that syncing Calendars between all the devices for a Mac user really isn't that bad at all.

doug

 

[douglerner]

As for Contact syncing, it looks to be especially simple because there is an option in the Mac Contacts app to "synchronize with Google."

Unfortunately I noticed that my iPhone 5's Contacts are not syncing with my Mac. Hah!

So I have to sort that out first. Maybe then it will sync with Google Contacts.

doug

 

[douglerner]

OK. I sorted out the syncing between my iPhone 5 and Mac (see https://discussions.apple.com/message/22831644?ac_cid=op123456#22831644).

But even though I'm trying these instructions: How to sync an Android phone to your Mac | Macworld for the Contacts, the contacts don't seem to be all there on my Nexus in the Google People app. Any ideas?

Thanks,

doug

 

[Scott Kenyon]

OK. I sorted out the syncing between my iPhone 5 and Mac (see https://discussions.apple.com/message/22831644?ac_cid=op123456#22831644).

But even though I'm trying these instructions: How to sync an Android phone to your Mac | Macworld for the Contacts, the contacts don't seem to be all there on my Nexus in the Google People app. Any ideas?

Thanks,

doug

Have you tried manually syncing your Google Account on the Nexus to try to force it to pull them down? If it's not so many, you can log into GMail on your Mac and add them manually. If it's a lot, I'd verify they synced with your GMail at all.

 

[douglerner]

Have you tried manually syncing your Google Account on the Nexus to try to force it to pull them down? If it's not so many, you can log into GMail on your Mac and add them manually. If it's a lot, I'd verify they synced with your GMail at all.

Yes, I tried going into the People app settings and doing the manual sync. It shows the current time for the "last sync" afterwards, but the info is not coming in.

There are too many to add manually.

doug