Contact won't sync from phone to gmail

bucsnnoles

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I just went from a Palm Pre to and EVO a few days ago. I set my gmail/google account on the phone and it appears that my gmail contacts are synced to the phone, but my contacts on my phone are not showing up on my gmail account. I was a 2.1 for a day or two and I'm on Froyo now. I'm not sure if it ever worked. I checked in the settings and it is setup to sync contacts and it gives no errors when i do a manual sync. Any ideas? Is it supposed to sync contacts from the phone to the gmail account?

Thanks from an EVO/Droid newbie.
 

bucsnnoles

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It looks like they are all phone accounts. Is there a way to change it? Preferably a way to change them all at once. I'm talking like 200+ contacts.
 

Insp_Gadget

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Import/Export

You could try the Import/Export to SD card feature.

1. Open the People app.
2. Hit the menu button and choose "Import/Export".
3. Select "Export to SD card".
4. Choose the "Phone" account to export.
5. The Evo will then create a vCard file (.vcf format) of all your contacts in the "Phone" account and store it on the SD card.

Now for the tricky part. You'll need to get rid of all the contacts in the "Phone" account. Otherwise, when you import them back in from the SD card, you'll have duplicates that will automatically link to the Google contacts.

1. Hit the menu button and choose "View".
2. Uncheck everything except "Phone", then hit "Done". This will make the phone only show the contacts in the "Phone" account.
3. Hit menu, then choose "Delete".
4. Hit menu again, then choose "Select All".
5. Choose "Delete (x)" ...where (x) is the number of contacts you have in the "Phone" account.
6. Now change your view again so that it shows all your contact accounts: Menu|View... Re-check the appropriate accounts.

Now you will want to import the contacts into your Google account.

1. Hit menu and choose "Import/Export".
2. Choose "Import from SD card".
3. Choose "Google" for the account that the imported contacts will be created in.
4. The phone will search for the vCard file and import the contacts into your Google account. (Give this some time... It will take a while before the contacts sync to the cloud and show up on the phone.)

Hope this helps.

P.S. I don't know if there is an app out there that does this automatically, but in case there isn't, this should fix you up.

P.S.S. The next time you create a contact with your phone, be sure to choose "Google" as the account type. Then, from that point forward it should default to Google when you create subsequent contacts.
 
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bucsnnoles

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You could try the Import/Export to SD card feature.

1. Open the People app.
2. Hit the menu button and choose "Import/Export".
3. Select "Export to SD card".
4. Choose the "Phone" account to export.
5. The Evo will then create a vCard file (.vcf format) of all your contacts in the "Phone" account and store it on the SD card.

Now for the tricky part. You'll need to get rid of all the contacts in the "Phone" account. Otherwise, when you import them back in from the SD card, you'll have duplicates that will automatically link to the Google contacts.

1. Hit the menu button and choose "View".
2. Uncheck everything except "Phone", then hit "Done". This will make the phone only show the contacts in the "Phone" account.
3. Hit menu, then choose "Delete".
4. Hit menu again, then choose "Select All".
5. Choose "Delete (x)" ...where (x) is the number of contacts you have in the "Phone" account.
6. Now change your view again so that it shows all your contact accounts: Menu|View... Re-check the appropriate accounts.

Now you will want to import the contacts into your Google account.

1. Hit menu and choose "Import/Export".
2. Choose "Import from SD card".
3. Choose "Google" for the account that the imported contacts will be created in.
4. The phone will search for the vCard file and import the contacts into your Google account. (Give this some time... It will take a while before the contacts sync to the cloud and show up on the phone.)

Hope this helps.

P.S. I don't know if there is an app out there that does this automatically, but in case there isn't, this should fix you up.

P.S.S. The next time you create a contact with your phone, be sure to choose "Google" as the account type. Then, from that point forward it should default to Google when you create subsequent contacts.

Sweet! Thanks for the info. That looks like a good workaround. Funny enough....as you were typing this I was exporting to .vcf and importing that into gmail. Going to try to finish the process now by deleting the 'phone' contacts and re-syncing the google account.
 

Insp_Gadget

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Sweet! Thanks for the info. That looks like a good workaround. Funny enough....as you were typing this I was exporting to .vcf and importing that into gmail. Going to try to finish the process now by deleting the 'phone' contacts and re-syncing the google account.

Be careful!! If the contacts from the Phone account linked to the Google account, you might end up deleting BOTH! That's why my procedure deletes the Phone account contacts BEFORE importing into Google.

If you end up deleting both (because they're linked), just re-import your contacts from the vCard file again.
 
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bucsnnoles

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Be careful!! If the contacts from the Phone account linked to the Google account, you might end up deleting BOTH! That's why my procedure deletes the Phone account contacts BEFORE importing into Google.

If you end up deleting both (because they're linked), just re-import your contacts from the vCard file again.

Hmmm....I'm seeing some odd behavior. I don't think this is the case, because it's set to only sync every 4 hours. I still see all of the contacts in my gmail account (550ish), but I'm only seeing 100 or so on my phone....and it's not like the beginning of the alphabet or anything.
I just checked the sync status and it looks like it's failing right now, so I'll chalk it up to that for the time being. I'll try to sync it again when I have better signal and see what happens. If worst comes to worst, I can always import the .vcf back to the phone like you said. I'll update when I get a successful sync.
Thanks again for the help. If this works, which it looks like it should, this processes definitely needs to be out there for other folks. I'm sure that many others could use this.

On a side note, Gadget, I see that you also went from a Pre to a EVO, how did you import your contacts from the Pre to EVO? I just had mine done at the Sprint store when I upgraded and they ended up being 'phone' contacts.
 

Insp_Gadget

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Hmmm....I'm seeing some odd behavior. I don't think this is the case, because it's set to only sync every 4 hours. I still see all of the contacts in my gmail account (550ish), but I'm only seeing 100 or so on my phone....and it's not like the beginning of the alphabet or anything.
I just checked the sync status and it looks like it's failing right now, so I'll chalk it up to that for the time being. I'll try to sync it again when I have better signal and see what happens. If worst comes to worst, I can always import the .vcf back to the phone like you said. I'll update when I get a successful sync.
Thanks again for the help. If this works, which it looks like it should, this processes definitely needs to be out there for other folks. I'm sure that many others could use this.

On a side note, Gadget, I see that you also went from a Pre to a EVO, how did you import your contacts from the Pre to EVO? I just had mine done at the Sprint store when I upgraded and they ended up being 'phone' contacts.

I've been using smartphones for a long time. I realized back when I got my first PDA that I should never rely on a PDA's or phone's solitary contact database to keep my contacts. So I always kept my contacts in Outlook and synced them to my PDAs.

Then I started using Exchange and started syncing to the cloud. By the time I bought my Pre, my contacts were already in the cloud, so I didn't have to involve Sprint to transfer anything. By that time, I had also created a Google account and exported/imported my contacts to Google. When I bought my Evo, I simply logged into my GMail account and all was good.

I have been trying for years to get my friends to put their contact info into either Exchange or Google Contacts for that very reason. Every time a friend of mine gets a new phone, they end up going through the pain of transferring contacts between the phones. I have over 1500 contacts. My friends are always amazed that I manage to keep everything when I switch phones.

All I end up saying to them is "The magic is in the cloud, man!"


P.S. It's a big mistake letting carrier techs transfer contacts between phones because they always put the contacts in the phone's proprietary contact database instead of the cloud.
 
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bucsnnoles

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Well....I'm definitely realizing that you're doing it the way I should.

So it looks like the contacts sync is now broke. The Gmail and Calendar parts sync just fine, but the contacts part bombs with the error "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly." I rebooted the phone and I'm still getting the same thing. I think I broke something. I'm researching this now.
 

Insp_Gadget

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Well....I'm definitely realizing that you're doing it the way I should.

So it looks like the contacts sync is now broke. The Gmail and Calendar parts sync just fine, but the contacts part bombs with the error "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly." I rebooted the phone and I'm still getting the same thing. I think I broke something. I'm researching this now.

What does Google show from the desktop?

http://www.google.com/contacts
 

bucsnnoles

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What does Google show from the desktop?

http://www.google.com/contacts

That's what I was talking about when I said gmail. It still shows all of the 500 contacts. I think I'm going to remove the google account from the phone and re-add it and see what happens. I'm pretty confident that I broke it and there is something cached somewhere that is causing the failure. I've still got the .vcf and all the contacts on google, so I'm not worried about loosing data at this point.
 

jcole01272

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I had this issue and while I received this error, when I made an update to a contact via the web, it showed up on my phone fine in a few hours. I searched all over, and tried the following solution from the HTC site:

* backed up my gmail contacts on the PC
* Cleared the data in Contacts Storage (HomeScreen->Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage applications->Contacts Storage->Clear data
* Then go back to ...Settings->Accounts&sync and manually resync the contacts data.

Worked for me and haven't had issues with that since.
 

bucsnnoles

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I had this issue and while I received this error, when I made an update to a contact via the web, it showed up on my phone fine in a few hours. I searched all over, and tried the following solution from the HTC site:

* backed up my gmail contacts on the PC
* Cleared the data in Contacts Storage (HomeScreen->Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage applications->Contacts Storage->Clear data
* Then go back to ...Settings->Accounts&sync and manually resync the contacts data.

Worked for me and haven't had issues with that since.

Yep....That took care of it. Thanks for the info. Looks like I should be all good now. This thread has even more good info in it now. Thanks a ton, fellas!
 

ron87

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Once you get all your contacts i, go to settings then go to accounts and sync, hit the gmail and turn off sync contacts. IF you dont then your pictures you have for your contacts will be ugly and pixelated. Dont know why this is but for some reason google contacts compresses the picture id and makes them look like crap.
 

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