Syncing Address Book with empty Google account will change >25% of contacts

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Syncing Address Book with empty Google account will change >25% of contacts

I would like to use the option to sync my Address Book with my Google contacts list. When I set it up, I get a warning that it will add 150 contacts, and modify 418 contacts.

Looking at the details, the added contacts are ones I already have, and the modifications include:

- Claiming to add an address ("before" shows none) even when that address is already there

- Deleting user photos

- Adding notes of the form "group:Group Name"

I have 956 cards in Address Book. I have zero contacts in Google.

Needless to say, I have cancelled so far. Any advice?

MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Aug 31, 2009 4:38 AM

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Answer 1

RPTB1 Author

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Sep 2, 2009 6:10 AM in response to RPTB1

I had a closer look at what sync would change. It seems to be contacts which are companies (without personal names), anyone with a middle name. In fact, pretty much any non-trival Address Book entry will be corrupted by syncing. I'm guessing this is because Apple can't pack all the Address Book data in the Google contact data, and have messed up.

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Answer 2

Oct 3, 2009 2:45 PM in response to RPTB1

I've noticed a few major discrepancies between Address Book and Google as well.

Companies tend to duplicate as people.
Deleting the person in AB has no effect on Google.
Deleting the person in Google results in both being deleted in AB, but the company remaining in Google.

There's also a LOT of minor differences between sync'd contacts and imported contacts in Google (groups going into comments, lost images, etc).

I'd love to slap whoever is responsible on both sides. I've written data migration code before, it's not that difficult, and should've been ironed out a long time ago.

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Answer 3

Kezar

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Nov 8, 2009 6:28 AM in response to Steven Littiebrant

I am having the same problem, and it makes keeping the 2 list "in sync" impossible. I'm trying to migrate from Palm to using AB/Google for contacts, and this is very frustrating.

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