Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

> Learn more

> Add to your calendar 

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: Michael Allbritton
Michael Allbritton Author
User level: Level 6
16,951 points

Syncing Google Contacts

Some time ago I syncing my contacts from the old Address Book app to Google. However, as some point the syncing between Address Book/Contacts and Google Contacts got disabled. So now I have contacts up there have not been updated in a long time. I would like to be able to sync my contacts from Contacts to Google without having them all be overwritten, which would mess up my Google + circles. So what I'd like to know is what is the best method to sync my contacts from iCloud, which are in Contacts, to Google and have the Google Contacts be updated and any new entries added with the least disruption.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, 15'' 2.3 GHz Intel i7 (early-2011)

Posted on Dec 14, 2012 8:04 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply
User profile for user: cdtrebor
cdtrebor
User level: Level 1
19 points

Posted on Dec 15, 2012 1:27 AM

On the desktop of your Mac in Address Book/Preferences (Contacts/Preferences in Mountain Lion) there should be an Accounts Tab and a Synchronize with Google option. This should be ticked and configured. When it is a menu bar item will appear with a couple of semi circles with arrows at the ends, and the tooltext is Sync Now. Use that to manually force a sync.


If you want to be absolutely certain nothing will duplicate you would be advised to export all your Google Contacts to a .csv file then delete them, set the above up and force a sync. But in case anything goes wrong I would also export all your contacts from Contacts or Address Book as a safeguard.


There was an app called Contacts Sync by YuFanApp if you have an iPhone which manually does a sync.


If you have contacts information in both Contacts and Google that you want to keep you might decide just to do the Sync and clean up afterwards, i.e. remove duplicates. If you've got say a 1000 contacts that's actually not going to take long.

View in context
11 replies
Question marked as Best reply
User profile for user: cdtrebor
cdtrebor
User level: Level 1
19 points

Dec 15, 2012 1:27 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

On the desktop of your Mac in Address Book/Preferences (Contacts/Preferences in Mountain Lion) there should be an Accounts Tab and a Synchronize with Google option. This should be ticked and configured. When it is a menu bar item will appear with a couple of semi circles with arrows at the ends, and the tooltext is Sync Now. Use that to manually force a sync.


If you want to be absolutely certain nothing will duplicate you would be advised to export all your Google Contacts to a .csv file then delete them, set the above up and force a sync. But in case anything goes wrong I would also export all your contacts from Contacts or Address Book as a safeguard.


There was an app called Contacts Sync by YuFanApp if you have an iPhone which manually does a sync.


If you have contacts information in both Contacts and Google that you want to keep you might decide just to do the Sync and clean up afterwards, i.e. remove duplicates. If you've got say a 1000 contacts that's actually not going to take long.

Reply

Syncing Google Contacts

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.
Learn more Sign up