Why is sync with Google removing Address Book contacts' pictures?

I'm having the same problem too.

Same issue here

Same problem for me, the Google sync is trying to remove photos from 35 contacts that currently have photos.

Part of my syncing issues seem to be caused by my address book trying to sync with an application called 'Daylite' (as well as google). Google seems to want to change all fields to 'other' and Daylite seems to only allow capitals (i.e. 'Other'), so many of my sync conflicts seem to be based on this capitalization issue. This is in addition to my picture removal issue which is discussed in this thread. I bring it up in case the issues are linked.

And...it happens again after a certain number of weeks. This morning, I paid $4.99 for a program called Contact Sync for Google Gmail on my Mac. It works perfectly. After I brought down my whole address book w/pictures from Gmail to my Address Book, I then setup my Contacts to sync to iCloud. Everything is showing up correct. Stay tuned to see how updates work. I emailed the developer to see if I could have it sync the Mac contacts to a second Gmail account (personal one). Stay tuned! At least my pictures are back.

Hi,

Same issue. Anyone find an answer? Is it related to Mountain Lion. gMail sync worked great on Lion for me. Since ML, sometimes i got a message that a lot of contacts has changed and after the sync i lost a lot of picture on my MacBook. The pictures are still available on my iphone and my gmail account.

I am pretty sure this has something to do with their new Contacts security under Privacy in 'Security & Privacy'. Must be some little bug in there that is stopping it with no option to enable it... just a thought.

I had the problem under Snow Leopard before the jump (over Lion) to Mountain Lion.

Probably not the OS.

It doesn't take out all photos, just a subset - any one know what would make the difference?

I agree with iPotential: it's not a problem of Mountain Lion.

I'm actually using Lion with iSync (which I got from my old Snow Leopard Time Machine backup, but you can find it on the web, just like you can also find Front Row for Lion).

I've always used iCloud and everything was perfect. Two days ago I bought a Google Nexus S (now running Jelly Bean) and decided to have all my devices (iPod Touch, iPad, Macbook Pro and the Nexus) syncing to Gmail instead of iCloud, so that the Nexus could have the contacts too.

The first problem was that I had to erase all my Gmail contacts and try to import the .csv (with 560 contacts) manually from the MBP. This imported the contacts onto Gmail, but without the pictures. Then I synced the Android phone and got the contacts onto it. Afterwards I used an android app to get high-def pictures from Facebook for the matching contacts. These were perfectly synced to Gmail... but never to Contacts.

I tried adding a TEST contact with picture on the Nexus phone. It then passed the contact to Gmail. But the contact never got to Contacts on my MBP (Lion). I had to manually click the iSync icon to have it synced, but the pictures were removed. I tried erasing the contacts from the MBP and without warnings it erased everything on Google. The good thing is that my Nexus syncs every 15 minutes so I had enough time to export the phone's contact list to a .csv file, emailed it to myself, imported it to contacts on the MBP and re-synced with Gmail using iSync. Now I got pictures everywhere!

... but it was temporary. Now it's trying to erase all my pictures from the MBP too. I really don't understand it, and I can't think of any workarounds. I tried everything!

It's like Steve Jobs said when announcing iCloud: "it just works". It's a shame I can't use iCloud with my Android.

I'm having the same issue! That's quite ugly! Everything works fine on the iOS devices. If I activate the sync on my iMac, some pictures get lost. And there are also phone numbers and email adresses which doesn't get synced. As I can see these happens at contacts which have more than 3 numbers or email adresses

Since Apple neither Google want to solve this problem, I did myself:

1) I deleted all images from contacts in OS Mountain Lion Contacts

2) I deleted all images from contacts in Google Contacts (or Gmail Contacts, it's the same)

3) sync

4) I deleted every contacts from OS X ML Contacts, deleted /library/application support/addressbook files, deleted /library/preferences/ any files related to address book and google contacts

5) I *manually* inserted one by one all images in every contacts in Google Contacts

6) sync

7) Some images still did not sync so I wrote fake notes on contacts to force syncing

8) I deleted fake notes

now every image contacts between Google Contacts and OS X ML Contacts have been synced since yesterday.
It works!

Some of you doing these short term tweaks, I guarantee it will happen again. Mine was happening every few weeks, and then your photos are all messed up. 'Contacts Sync Google Gmail' is the only solution I found. I run it on the Mac ($4.99) and I made my Mac Address book my master, and I push that or two-way sync it to my different accounts (personal Gmail, work Gmail, etc.). Since switching to this, everything works.

Here is a bit of oddness that worked for me.

1. Open Google Apps/Gmail.
2. Find a contact that has a picture that is not synchronizing with the Contacts.app.
3. Make any change to the contact; name email address, etc.
4. Click off it to make sure the changes are updated in Google Apps/Gmail.
5. From the Apple Menu, choose the rotating arrows and choose Sync Now

This updated the contacts in my Contacts.app. Having the Contacts.app open, you can watch the sync update the picture.

My guess: Nowadays we all have multiple softwares updating our contacts, IM clients, contact apps, Facebook, etc. At any given time, information in Google Apps/Gmail is overwritten; changing the settings needed to synchronize correctly. For example, even after this fix, the issue may arise again if my iPhone removes the messenger type (MSN) from the contact and writes that back to Google Apps/Gmail. When my Mac sync's after that, the picture may be gone.

HTH

i got it fixed.

1. First unclick the "synchronize with google" in contacts settings on your Mac.

2. Delete all your google contacts

3. Go to System preference>Mail, Contacts&Calendar>Add Other Account>Add a CardDav Account>

user name is ur email address, server address is google.com