A few requirements to sync Google Contacts, Android & Thunderbird

[Miles]

Following is my notes on the trials and tribulations and pitfalls of
setting up sync. Practically zero help was found in Google or other
programs so it took quite some time to ascertain the cause of the bugs:

9 Aug 12 REQUIRED FIXES TO SYNC GMAIL(CONTACTS), THUNDERBIRD, & ANDROID.

1) Only 1 device at a time can sync with GM, if more 1 negates the
other. I turned off sync in TB, then synced GM & phone, then turned
off auto sync on the phone, and turned on sync In TB. When they were
in sync I backed up the TB profile.

2) Added an email address of x...@ooo.com for every contact that didn't
have one. I had read by the author of Google Contacts that GM
requires an email address, so he built into his program a pseudo email
address to auto add to each blank field. However, evidently mine
didn't work and many many kept returning as not found, missing,
duplicates (as many as 26), etc, etc. I have at least 54 without
email addresses. Email GC author if he knows details – reply not yet
received. FYI, I'm convinced that it's TB that requires the email
address, not GM.

When I discovered my dummy email address didn't always work – or
would one day and not the next – I deleted all of those in GM, then
opened TB and GC auto added them, but that's only seen in TB, not GM
or the phone.

3) Early in the game I had deleted MyCoworkers list because it wasn't
needed. Soon read that doesn't work and restored it by adding it to
Google Voice. However, now stuck with 2 as seen in TB MyCoworkers and
MyCoworkers(0). Deleted both in TB and GM. Now don't have entry in
GM, but in TB have MyCoworkers which returns with every sync, and in
the phone have MyCo-Workers which I can't find a method to delete.
ADDITIONAL WORK NEEDED.

4) In TB if several are deleted from a group the blank row remains and
if too many cannot see the first entry, so several times I thought I
had lost Business – but hadn't as discovered yesterday!

5) Tried Gmail Backup and found it didn't work, and later discovered
it's for email only, not contacts.

6) Tried TB addon Zimbus which worked fine when first tried – better
than Google Contacts – but for the past several it hasn't worked –
asked author, no reply in 3 days, so reverted to GC and all OK.

7) 10Aug-manual sync phone with button & TB sync off. Deleted 2 dupes
& corrected 1 title and all sync and match the other two devices. No
pseudo email seen here – same as GM. Now the 11th and all remain OK.
Also learned to put lists in alpha sequence in the Samsung Note phone.
QUANTITIES IN EACH LIST IN THE 3 PROGRAMS:
PHONE GM TB
ACQUAINT 26 26 26
BODEGA 16 16 16
BIZ 86 86 86
COMPUTR 36 36 36
EDUCAT 22 22 22
FAMILY 10 10 10
FRIENDS 56 56 56
J-H 37 37 37
J L 58 58 58
MEDICAL 22 22 22
MYCONTACTS 351 351 351
POLITIC 5 5 5
SLS 87 87 87
STAR G 0 0 0
GOOGLE – – 367
COWKR 0 0 0
COWKR1 - - 0
MC-SKYP 1 - -

Miles Chapuis -- (if additional info is needed, please ask and I'll
try to answer.) At the moment I'm attempting to go back to a more
workable version of TB that allows selection of a mail group and entry
as BCC. Currently using TB 14 and first going back to 13.01 -- and if
that doesn't work, back to 12 -- I know it wasn't long ago, but the
version changes have been so brisk without proper identification as to
the differences, who knows it could be version 10 or 11!

[Restorm]

Thanks for this, Miles. Someone set up an email feed to my Android
about a year ago, but it was a bit buggy, and my email address has
changed since then, and I don't know how to set up the new one. I'd be
happy to pay you for your time if you can help me with this. Email
st...@recitizen.org if you're interested.