Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird deleted

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ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird deleted

Post by ateshga »

Hi there,

it seems i dont really understand the syncing behavior of birdy sync.

I have syncronized and trusting birdie obviously not read the warning properly.

I now have no contacts in thunderbird
All contacts on the phone.

My Question: how do i get the the contacs back to thunderbird?

The old Phone still works and the contacts are still on it, perhaps that could help. But i dont want to sync them away as well.

Thank in advance

Ateshga



Some mor Information:

OLD Phone Windows 6.5 Mobile which i sync very successful for two years now over USB.

Now i have an Android Phone (Samsung Galaxy Nexus)
I dont want my contacts and calendar stuff in the cloud, so i thought birdy would again do the trick.
I had sucessfilly installed all the latest versions (birdie 2.3.7.0 on the phone and 2.3.10 on the Desktop, Thunderbird 10 with Lightning ans Android 4.0.2)

Now i have to syncronize over the air vie bluetooth, which pretty sucks because i have to active it in both manualy (Yes i read about turning the usb on, but this opens a security risk, so i dont want this any more)

Birdy
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Posts: 3118
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Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by Birdy »

Hello Ateshga,

Could it be the same problem as described in this thread?
Which DEFAULT account did you select to be synchronized in BirdieSync options on your Android device ?
When you edit the details of your contacts on your Android device, which account do they belong to ?
Thanks.
Birdy

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Hi,

i have dicovered sth that might cause the error

All contacts are googlemail contacts now.

I read somewhere in an other post that android does that automatic.

Is this the error?

how can i prevent my phone from doing that?

I have to have an google account for andorid-market reasons.

Still looking for help.

Thanks in advance.

Ateshga

Birdy
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Posts: 3118
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Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by Birdy »

I think that Android automatically moved the contacts synchronized into the Phone account to Google account... That's why BirdieSync cannot find these contacts again at next synchronization in the Phone account and consider them as deleted.
So the solution would be to select your Google account (I don't know if you have another contact account other than "Phone" and "Google" on your Android device) as the DEFAULT contact account in BirdieSync settings.
Note that you can prevent Google from synchronizing contacts on the web: Android Settings/Accounts & Sync/Google: uncheck Google synchronization for contacts.

I'll see if it's possible to detect this behavior (contacts moved to the Google account). The problem is that it is not necessarily immediate and could take at least a few seconds for Android to do it.
Birdy

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Hi,

i have "phone" as my default contact account.

when i add my googlemail account (which has 193 contacts, so android must have moved them there) i cant sync because off one incorrect contact group:
The Errormessage reads as followss:
The contact "XYZ" belonging to the account "YXZ@googlemail.com" is placed in the group "Favourites" which belomgs to another account "Phone".

Please move this contac to a group belonging to the same account "YXZ@googlemail.com" as the contact.

I dont have a clou how to perform this action.

Perhaps i have to delete this one... (I will do it tommorow i no one has a better idea :-)) There is no context menu poping (and i must admit that i had problems to find the favourites tab...) All web report concerning this Favourite handling ("Problem") seem not to be up to android 4...

Thanks for your help so far. I´ll keep reporting.

And yes the mentioned thread above seems very similar, but doesn´t help me out either.



Ateshga

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Hi,

i couldn resist and started to delete. I have deleted to 2 contacts now and there is no system behind it. i think all contacts have this little "problem".

what next?

i have no clou to solve this.

Thnx
Ateshga

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

restoring the thunderbird abook.mab file doesnt.help either.

i am getting wild here. is this "everything in the f***ing-cloud-thing" really what everybody wants? I am blaming google here, "stealing" my contacts for syncing them to somewhere in...

I am wondering if staying with windows mobile would have been better. (But i´d like to write java programms....)

please send help! :-)

thx
Ateshga

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Hi,

feeling desperate because of having the newest Phone in town, but cant use properly i tried this and that to have my contacts out of the favourites list. So i deleted all my accounts which solved the problem in a way that i had to jump back to an old backup from thunderbird an resync the hole stuff, hopefully avoiding the mistakes.

So far it works fine with the contacts:
i told birdie to sync both: phone an gmail account, which doubles the contacts for a short period of time. then birdiesyncronisation was reseted and birdie works fine an sorted the doubles out.
Now all contacts are gmail account contacts. This confirms the advice in the above mentioned thread.

My events are now also backsynced and i am hoping birdie sorts the doubles out and works normal then as well.

Thanks for helping me although reading the warnings birdie gives me would have prevented me having this trouble.

ateshga

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Something to laugh:

I just found out that birdie syncs OTA and not as mentioned above via Bluetooth...

and thats why it works fine at home and not at work (I work independant so i dont have a work exchange calender or network to work with just my phone and my laptop)

++++yes you can laugh at me++++ The problem is mostly found sitting in front of the PC ;-)

And i found out that my thoughts using usb is unsafe is wrong.

"oh happy days" i am beginning to enjoy my android allways "on" mobile.

By the way BirdieSync works fine now (as it allways did in past windows mobil times)

Thanks for the great software and fast and competent support.

bye
ateshga

p.s. now i only have to get the Bluetooth stuff to work and i dont need an extra cable anymore, but that is propably an other adventure ;-)

Birdy
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Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by Birdy »

On Android devices, sometimes a contact is present in an account (Google for instance) and belongs to a group which is present in another account (Phone for instance). This situation should not happen: a contact and its group should belong to the same account. Anyway, I'll see if it's possible to ignore this error and not stop the synchronization.

I'll also see if it's possible to detect if Android automatically moves contacts created in the Phone account to the Google account. But in this case I'll need to send you a new version to test it because this behavior happens only on some specific Android devices...

BirdieSync doesn't work with Bluetooth. Or let's say it differently. Presently BirdieSync only works with Wi-Fi, USB and cellular connection. But the next version should be more permissive and should be able to use other connection mode IF this connection mode provides a TCP/IP connection with the desktop (which is generally not offered by Bluetooth stack).

I'm glad you could finally synchronize your data ! :) So you could finally get rid of your duplicates ? Note that there is two way to manage duplicates. If these duplicates are present in the same address book/calendar on the desktop (and so on the mobile device), you can use BirdieSync tool on the desktop to remove them if they are strictly identical (Thunderbird menu "Tools/BirdieSync/Remove duplicates"). If these duplicates belong to two different accounts on your mobile device (one in the Phone account and one in the Google account for instance), you can use Android BirdieSync menu (Remove contacts/Remove events) to remove all contacts/events in a specific account. Ensure to have a recent backup before doing this. :wink:
Birdy

ateshga
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:19 pm

Re: Contacts on Phone (Android 4.0.2) but in Thunderbird del

Post by ateshga »

Hallo,
BirdieSync doesn't work with Bluetooth. Or let's say it differently. Presently BirdieSync only works with Wi-Fi, USB and cellular connection. But the next version should be more permissive and should be able to use other connection mode IF this connection mode provides a TCP/IP connection with the desktop (which is generally not offered by Bluetooth stack).
Yeah i noticed now that BT doesnt work... I just had accidently syncronized via WLAN.... :-) Works fine NOW
I'm glad you could finally synchronize your data ! :) So you could finally get rid of your duplicates ? Note that there is two way to manage duplicates. If these duplicates are present in the same address book/calendar on the desktop (and so on the mobile device), you can use BirdieSync tool on the desktop to remove them if they are strictly identical (Thunderbird menu "Tools/BirdieSync/Remove duplicates"). If these duplicates belong to two different accounts on your mobile device (one in the Phone account and one in the Google account for instance), you can use Android BirdieSync menu (Remove contacts/Remove events) to remove all contacts/events in a specific account. Ensure to have a recent backup before doing this. :wink:
Yes BirdieSync removed all the duplicates while syncing. It seemed first all was synced to the phone. Then BirdieSync wanted to delet everythink which i canceld this time. then i synced them all form phone to desktop. and then removed the duplicates because they where still on the Desktop. This was done for contacts and events and took quite a while. I reduced the syncing period to 6 Month. Now syncing is faster. it takes a while before Birdie really starts. The comparism seems to take a while but nothing really care about.

Yes before i start major changes i will back up!!

Thanks

Bye
Ateshga

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