Syncing Google Contacts

Question

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

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Answer 1

cdtrebor

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.

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Answer 2

Dec 22, 2012 4:42 AM in response to cdtrebor

Yeah, I know how to enable the syncing. I just want to try to get the contact information from my iCloud contacts into Google Contacts without creating a lot of duplicates and messing up my Google+ circles.

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Answer 3

cdtrebor

Level 1

19 points

Dec 23, 2012 4:31 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

I would just go ahead and sync (but back things up first!) and clean up afterwards. It probably won't take as long as you might think to delete some duplicates..

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Answer 4

Dec 23, 2012 4:53 AM in response to cdtrebor

Yeah, I may have to just do that. Athough thinking about doing it without being able to at least do it a little at a time gives me a headache. 🙂

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Answer 5

hideff

Level 1

0 points

Dec 26, 2012 6:27 PM in response to Michael Allbritton

Has anyone tried "Contacts Sync For Google Gmail?"

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Answer 6

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Dec 26, 2012 7:38 PM in response to Michael Allbritton

You can't sync contacts in an iCloud account with Google, only the On My Mac account does that.

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Answer 7

Dec 27, 2012 3:17 AM in response to Csound1

Csound1 wrote:

You can't sync contacts in an iCloud account with Google, only the On My Mac account does that.

Yes, as I am discovering. At least the process didn't mess up my Google Contacts or the iCloud Contacts. So I'm still right where I was.

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Answer 8

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Dec 27, 2012 8:55 AM in response to Michael Allbritton

If you wish to sync your iCloud contacts to use on an Android phone there is a way, but without using Google.

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Answer 9

Dec 27, 2012 11:24 AM in response to Csound1

Naw, I just wanted to update the Google Contacts with the most current contacts data.

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Answer 10

May 9, 2013 4:17 PM in response to Csound1

"If you wish to sync your iCloud contacts to use on an Android phone there is a way, but without using Google."

How?

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Answer 11

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

May 9, 2013 4:19 PM in response to mcparadis

SmoothSync for Cloud Contacts, also SmoothSync for Cloud Calendars (if you want calendars as well). From the Play Store (not free)

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