Google Contacts support is only available for users of the subscription service
of GooSync. If you have not yet upgraded to the GooSync Premium account you can
do so by using the upgrade account button on the home page once you are logged into
your account.
Please find below details on how to synchronise contacts between your device and
your Google account.
If you need to ask specific technical questions please submit these to our
support forum.
GooSync also provides its own Contacts manager if you do not wish to synchronise
your contacts with Google. For more information on this please check the GooSync Contacts Help page.
Due to the limitations listed on this page we advise you to backup your contacts
before synchronising with Google Contacts:
- For existing contacts in Google you can use the export feature to backup your contacts
to a .csv file.
- For existing device contacts we suggest that you backup them up using another contacts
manager such as GooSync Contacts.
Authenticating with Google Contacts
Google Contacts Sync Limitations
Changing Contacts Synchronisation
Authenticating with Google Contacts
Before you can synchronise with Google Contacts you must first ensure your GooSync
account is correctly authenticated with your Google account.
You can check this by first going to your
Control Panel and making sure that your account is currently set to synchronise
with Google Contacts. If not please click the Change button and select the Google
Contacts option.
Once the Google Contacts option has been selected you will be able to authenticate
with your Google account. Click the Change link next to the authentication message
to proceed with the authentication process. Full details on the authentication process
can be found on the Authentication
Help page.
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Google Contacts Sync Limitations
Unfortunately there are some limitations present when synchronising with Google
Contacts. Some are imposed by Google, some by GooSync, and some by certain devices.
Google Limitations
One major limitation of Google Contacts is that it will not allow multiple contacts
to share the same email address.
If a contact already exists in Google, and a separate contact is sent by the device
that uses the same email address, this contact will not be added into Google. This
can result in the sync process failing to add several contacts into your Google
account.
This problem can also appear if no contacts exist in Google. If the device sends
multiple contacts during the sync process, and they all share the same email address,
Google will only add the first contact it is provided. All other contacts that share
the email address will be rejected.
There are also several contact fields that are not supported by Google that may
appear on your device.
Some examples of these are the Birthday, Anniversary, URL,
Prefix and Suffix fields.
These fields may appear on your device but are not supported by Google so will not
be stored anywhere in your Google account.
Google Contacts only provides a single "Address" field (there are no individual
fields for street, city etc). This means that the address information, when sent
to the device, will only appear in the "Street" section of the devices contact.
The device contact information will be sent to Google as individual fields, and
GooSync will merge this into a single address for use within Google. If this contact
is then modified in Google the address will be changed on the device to only appear
in the "Street" field.
Contact categories (or Groups in Google) are not supported in the sync process.
All Google contacts will appear on the device without a category, or in an "Unfiled"
category. All device contacts will be sent to Google without any Group information.
GooSync Limitations
Due to a restriction in the vCard specification GooSync is unable to synchronise
the "type" associated with email addresses (Home, Work etc).
This means that all email addresses, regardless of whether they are set as Home
or Work etc, will be synchronised to the device or Google without a type (these
may show as "Other" on your device).
GooSync will also only synchronise one of each phone number type (Home, Work, Fax
etc) between your device and Google.
The majority of devices support only a limited number of phone numbers (maximum
of two home numbers for example). To prevent confusion over why certain numbers
may not be synchronised to the device, or to Google, GooSync imposes a restriction
of only allowing one of each phone type to be synchronised (one Home number, one
Mobile number etc).
Only the first number of each type provided by Google or the device will be synchronised
to the opposite platform. All other numbers of that type will be ignored by the
sync process.
Device Limitations
Certain devices have their own limitations with regards to the synchronisation of
contacts.
You may find that your device provides you with several contact fields, but the
sync application on your device may not send this data during the sync process.
This also applies when sending contacts from Google. Certain contact fields may
be sent to the device but the sync application may not accept them.
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Changing Contacts Synchronisation
This is done from your Control Panel.
On this page you will see a message informing you what contacts manager you are
currently synchronising with (Google or GooSync). Next to this will be a Change
button.
Clicking that Change button will give you the option of changing your contacts
manager.
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