Contact synchronizing

jj14x · #1 (**permalink**) 12-30-2011, 02:00 PM

Hi! I'm currently an android user and am looking to possibly move to the Windows phone side. I am currently waiting on my Lumia 800 to be delivered, but have a few questions about contact syncing

I currently have my contacts on gmail and android syncs to it as expected. What I miss is the ability to have a local copy in my desktop outlook (non-exchange), so I usually download from gmail once a month and overwrite my outlook contacts (since gmail is almost always up-to-date because of my phone)

Reading about this on microsoft's site, it looks like I can sync up my outlook to my live account (using hotmail connector which I already use).

Question 1 - is this a one time sync (between live acct and desktop outlook)? Or does it sync back and forth if there are changes in either location? (I assume/expect that the WP7 will make sure that the phone and live acct will always be in sync regardless of where I make changes).
In other words, will my phone, live acct and outlook contacts be in perfect sync?

Question 2 - If I have my gmail account set up in WP7 people hub, will it show me duplicate contacts (that I will have to manually link)? Or will it be able to synchronize my contacts between gmail and live as well?

Thanks!

eric12341 · #2 (**permalink**) 12-30-2011, 02:54 PM

1- I don't use the hotmail-outlook connector so I'm not sure how it works,maybe @dtrush can fill u in on this but in theory everything should be in perfect sync since outlook would be downloading the data from ur hotmail account.

2- the contacts will not be duplicated and u can link them. This is done automatically once or twice a day but u can do it manually as well

one more pointer make sure that u sign into the hotmail account first when u get the phone and make sure that it is not a hotmail account that you've had since high school or more than a year old for that matter, that should be the secondary account. This is to prevent ur contact list from becoming cluttered with a bunch of people who don't have numbers or nonsense numbers.

jj14x · #3 (**permalink**) 12-30-2011, 03:03 PM

Thanks for the suggestion about using a recent account. Could I instead just wipe out the contact list from live and repopulate by importing a csv file with latest contacts? Or does it look at every email sent/received and extract Email address from there?? Eek!

eric12341 · #4 (**permalink**) 12-30-2011, 08:40 PM

No it doesn't do that, u can just use the .csv method, I do recommend using a brand new hotmail account as the primary account in wp7 tho.

dtrush · #5 (**permalink**) 01-01-2012, 08:38 PM

Sorry I'm late to the party

Is your gmail account a windows live id now? If so I think that only you can send and receive mail with a gmail account and only POP through Outlook regardless if it is a Live ID though I could be wrong. Through your phone however you should get EAS service for E-Mail, Contacts and Calendar. I have my gmail account combined on the WP7 handset for this. Also, make sure if you're going to use multiple calendars in GMail on a WP7 handset to enable them by following this good tutorial. One of my friends had this issue and the problem is now solved.
Mango Tip: Sync Multiple Google Calendars with Windows Phone

I would second the suggestion by @eric12341 about getting a hotmail account setup. Once you do the .csv export from Google on your contacts they will sync right over into Hotmail and you can just manage them from Hotmail after that. I can't see any possible way of managing your Google contacts on Outlook unfortunately. The Hotmail connector does a fabulous job at keeping your Outlook data synced up with the Hotmail account (with the exception of tasks

). Oh well, I mainly use my Office 365 paid accounts for the tasks! They do sync well between WP7 and Hotmail.

jj14x · #6 (**permalink**) 01-01-2012, 09:07 PM

Hi dtrush - no, my gmail account is not a live ID
The problem is that at least initially, I do need my gmail account contact list to be up to date as well (at least till I figure out whether to continue with WP7 or Android) - so, trying to figure out a way to keep all contacts up to date.

dtrush · #7 (**permalink**) 01-01-2012, 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jj14x

Hi dtrush - no, my gmail account is not a live ID
The problem is that at least initially, I do need my gmail account contact list to be up to date as well (at least till I figure out whether to continue with WP7 or Android) - so, trying to figure out a way to keep all contacts up to date.

I'll have to mess around with it to see what I can figure out. I honestly don't believe there is a way to get your Outlook contacts to sync with Gmail directly from all of the reading I've done flawlessly. Every "solution" seems to have people claiming there are translation problems, duplicates etc. which I'm sure no one wants to deal with. I can assure you though, syncronization between your WP7 and Google works well after you enable the sub-calendars

Remember that any contacts you have in Google and Windows Live will combine on your WP7. Not datawise, just visually on the handset. When you go to enter some info it will ask you which account to edit. Yes, still messy for what you're trying to do but It might get you by if you just update the Google one and export to Outlook like you've been doing until you decide just to convert it all to Windows Live. Can't edit the Outlook contact because it's too difficult to sync it back which goes back to your original question.

One other thing...If you had pictures associated with your Google contacts I don't believe there's a way to transfer those to your Windows Live account. You'd have to re-add them manually. I transferred an Exchange account to gmail and then back again to Windows Live. Not too bad but I had forgotten about that detail. Obviously a .csv file wouldn't have the picture lol.

jj14x · #8 (**permalink**) 01-01-2012, 11:14 PM

Thank you for that information!

eric12341 · #9 (**permalink**) 01-02-2012, 08:49 AM

And for some reason pictures synched from Google to WP are low quality. This is due to the fact that google is trying to sabotage WP.

jj14x · #10 (**permalink**) 01-02-2012, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eric12341

And for some reason pictures synched from Google to WP are low quality. This is due to the fact that google is trying to sabotage WP.

lol!
Naw.... the pictures synced from google to Android are low quality too...
The problem is that once the picture is uploaded to gmail, google stores at lower resolution. What I do on Android is to create a local (phone) contact and store a higher resolution picture on that contact. Then, I link that phone contact to the gmail contact and specify that it should use the picture from phone contact instead.