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Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2013 11:29 pm
by BillH
I am a bit confused. I just started using BirdieSync. I have two android devices and my desktop. I sync my desktop to my phone and to my tablet.

On my desktop I have 209 contacts in Thunderbird. I synced my phone telling BirdieSync to replace the entries on my phone. I did the same for my tablet. Now when I run a sync in BirdieSync it shows that I have 207 contacts in my phone and 207 on my tablet. Thunderbird still says I have 209 contacts. What is even more weird is that my phone says I have 205 contacts. I don't see a way to tell how many are in my tablet... it doesn't display the total.

My first question is why aren't all 209 contacts being synced to my phone and tablet. Is there some set of circumstances that will prevent a contact from getting synced? So far I haven't been able to figure out which contacts are in Thunderbird but not on my phone and tablet.

My second question is why would BirdieSync say I have 207 contacts on my phone and I really have only 205?

Thanks,

Bill

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:53 am
by Birdy
Hello Bill,

Which version of BirdieSync do you use ? 2.4.5.2 ?
Would you have some contact lists in Thunderbird ? If yes, they will be ignored by synchronization.
In Thunderbird, would you have contacts with the same name ? Android may merge these contacts and present only one contact to you.

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:39 pm
by BillH
Hello Birdy,

I am using version 2.4.5.2.

Ah... I had read that about distribution lists in the FAQ or help, but it hadn't clicked for me. That would explain how Thunderbird says 209 and BirdieSync says 207. I have 2 distribution lists.

As for the discrepancy between BirdieSync and my phone (207 vs 205), I'm not sure. I don't see any duplicates in Thunderbird. I guess I'll have to manually compare the two contact lists and see if I can see what is different. With over 200 entries that may take me a while. I'll let you know what I find out.

Thanks!

Bill

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 5:48 pm
by Birdy
If you open Settings in BirdieSync Android app, in the Contact tab, you should get the number of contacts for each contact account. Which numbers are displayed ?

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2013 6:42 pm
by BillH
Hello Birdie,

Since I posted I have added three contacts to Thunderbird, so now Thunderbird shows 212, BirdieSync on the PC shows 210, and my phone contact list shows 208. The difference between 212 and 210 is the fact that I have 2 distribution lists, which I mentioned earlier.

If I open the BirdieSync settings on my phone, it shows:

xxx@gmail.com: 2 contacts
BirdieSync: 210 contacts

BirdieSync is flagged as the default and is the only one selected. In my phone contact list, I've told it to display my BirdieSync contacts only.

So, it seems odd that the difference between the 210 that the desktop shows and the 208 the phone shows is 2 which just happens to be how many are in the xxx@gmail.com account. Don't know if this is just a coincidence or not.

EDIT: I found one entry on my phone that was a preset for my phone carrier, Verizon, that had BirdieSync listed twice as accounts for the contact. I deleted this contact from my phone and then re-synced and now BirdieSync on the desktop shows 208 contacts and BirdieSync settings on my phone shows 208 contacts. Oddly, when I go into my contacts, it says there are only 207. I'm not sure why the count went down by two on the desktop when I only deleted one contact unless it somehow was counting this one as 2. I don't see a problem with the other 4 preset contacts on my phone. I'll keep looking around. There probably is one more contact that somehow is messed up.

Thanks,

Bill

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:25 am
by Birdy
A contact displayed to the user by the Contact app can be the grouping of several contacts recorded in the database. So it may be possible that 1 contact displayed in Android represents 2 contacts in the database (which seemed to be the case for the contact related to your phone carrier). You may reproduce this by "Linking" contacts together in your Contact app (you may have a "Link" menu entry). It's possible to group several contacts under one unique contact. And I guess it may affect the number of contacts displayed in the contact app.

Re: Contact sync question / problem

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:14 pm
by BillH
Birdy,

OK... I'll take a look at that. I'm not too worried about the difference. I'll find it eventually.

Thanks!

Bill