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Confused about syncing Droid X with Gmail Contacts

I've had my new Droid X for a few weeks now, and I'm loving it -- but I'm still confused about the "right" way to keep it in sync.

My previous phone was a BlackBerry, which I routinely synced with my MS Outlook calendar and contacts. When I got the Droid, the salesman at the Verizon store transferred all of my contacts into it before he gave me the phone. Nice. The only disappointment was that the photos I had assigned to individual contacts were lost. I had all my names and numbers, but no faces. <sigh>

I quickly realized that syncing with MS Outlook was going to be a hassle, so I reluctantly decided to abandon Outlook and use Gmail contacts on my computer instead. I was delighted to discover that when I added a picture to a Gmail contact, it immediately showed up in the Droid -- and when I added a picture to a contact in the Droid, it immediately appeared in my Gmail account. I thought the two-way sync was working perfectly.

So last week, I ran into an old friend who had just moved, and she gave me her new street address. I whipped out my Droid and updated her address. Today, I discovered that the address did NOT get updated in Gmail -- and I can't figure out how to make that happen. What could I be missing?

I'm also confused by the "Linked Profiles" thing ... most of my contacts in the Droid (including this one) now show 2 linked profiles ("Google" and "Phone Contacts") ... I'm not sure exactly what that means, or if that's as it should be ...

Puzzled,

folkdude

Comments

gerio

I don't know about the linked profiles issue, I don't use it and I haven't seen a need for it (yet, but I'm open to suggestions..).

Go to "settings/accounts/gmail" and make sure that the contacts option is selected to sync. It should have come that way when it was new and at one time, it apparently WAS checked since you can sync those pics back and forth. Perhaps it became un-checked for some reason I can't come up with.

If that doesn't do it, I don't know what to say...

Good luck,

Geri O

folkdude

Thanks for the reply! I just checked my Gmail account settings ... and yes, they're set to sync "Contacts", "Gmail", and "Calendar" ...

Still puzzled,

folkdude

mortb

Synching between Gmail on your computer and your Droid should be automatic. If Synch is checked off (a bright green check mark) it should work. Try turning your Droid off, waiting a few seconds, and then turning it back on.

As for linking...That is the Droid way of putting information about a single contact into one package. For example, say you have a friend on facebook, twitter, and as a contact. Instead of having this friend listed three different times, you link the information together and have just one listing. Don't confuse this with grouping. Using group, you can set up a group of, for example, work contacts, friends, family, and people you love to ignore. Then place the various contacts into the various groups.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

folkdude

Ah, that's a helpful description of linking ... thanks for that. I tried turning the Droid off and on, but that still didn't trigger a sync. So then I tried deleting the street address from the Droid, waiting a few minutes, then adding it back. Within seconds, the new address appeared in my Gmail contacts, just as it was supposed to. :smileyhappy:

So that resolves this particular sync issue, but it's disturbing to realize that it had failed initially, for reasons that are still unknown. If I hadn't been double-checking, it appears that things would have been out of sync indefinitely.

kmax44

Just to jump in on this, I have several gmail accounts on PC that have pictures associated with them but only one of them shows up on my phone, I followed the manual sync steps you advised and still no luck...any other advice?

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