Thunderbird Contacts and Address Book or iPhone Mail

Hi Cliff.

Can you help me a little bit more here?

Can you help me by what you mean by you can't write to Mac Address Book in TB. What do you mean by "write"?

Also, were you able to get any Thunderbird Categories into Address Book?

I have a ton of addresses and they are all categorized to keep them in order. I'm very much hoping to get these categories to wherever I export them...

Much thanks!

Jon

Thank you so much for this.

Can I just ask you about the Exchange part of this? This is Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > New Account / Microsoft Exchange? And then somehow you are able to sync this with your Thunderbird Contacts is that right? And then it automatically syncs up with you Gmail account so that you have the TB Addresses available to your online GMail (as opposed to the Gmail account I am accessing in TB)?

Can I also please ask what this does for you? I mean, this makes the contact database available on your GMail account on your phone? Does it make it available on the webmail that I have on my phone (the same webmail I am accessing using TB on my desktop and laptop)...?

- Jon

Hi! Thank you so much for this. I have a one man small office and if you had any idea how long I've wanted to finally get all this together - well - if I think about it I might start weeping.

Anyway. Can I please ask you to elaborate on "The Zindus plug-in syncs the TB Address Book with Gmail Contacts. The Exchange Account syncs GMail contacts with the iPhone contacts which are used when composing mail (among other things)." Are you referring to the Contacts App on the iPhone when you refer to "iPhone contacts". Does the iPhone use the Contacts App database when composing mail across all types of Email on your iPhone (Gmail, domain name, mobile me etc)? I don't understand this exactly. Can you also please help me understand what "other things" it does?

Also, I gather you are describing two different ways of syncing contacts in the above? Or are these two different steps in getting TB contacts to iPhone contacts, I did not get this...

I guess you are using your GMail account which you are accessing via IMAP on your iPhone (and your Computers) to store and manage this data? It comes from TB goes to GMail - via Zindus - and then syncs to the "iPhone contacts" via GMail (using IMAP), in some way - - yes? This is done transparently and is effectively a 3-way sync? TB GMail "iPhone Contacts", yes?

In the case of the Exchange Account I am replacing the IMAP sync from GMail to the iPhone (which I guess is automatic?) with an "exchange sync" which is a different kind of sync, yes?

I have IMAP for my website-based email (which I use primarily) to sync laptop, desktop and iPhone. This gets addressed to me via the domain name of the website (jon@mydomain.com). I also have GMail which I access via IMAP in this way. Then I have a me.com address which I never really use.

I guess the goal for me from what I am hearing is to perfect my TB Address Book, get it synced to my GMail account - via Zindus - and then let GMail do an automated sync with iPhone Contacts? If this is the Contacts App, then I am all hooked up I guess?

Do you happen to know if CATEGORIES in TB get through to Contacts as GROUPS (if this is at all applicable...). Do you happen to know if CATEGORIES in TB can get sorted the same way in GMail? This is kind of a big deal here as the final database is going to be very big (or not so ambitious) depending on how much data I can get through with integrity...

Have you ever heard of LDIP out of curiosity? I can't tell if this is solely for corporate setups.

Big whole bowl of thanks,

Jon