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Re: BirdieSync not authorized to access contacts

Posted: Tue Sep 24, 2013 8:47 pm
by Miklos
Your explanation of the group/mailing list lack of correspondence may end up being a problem preventing my friend from using BirdieSync (and thus Thunderbird): prior to my installing Thunderbird on his PC, he was using MS Outlook (or whatever it is called) and the Windows contacts not only synchronized with his iPhone, but their regrouping did too, and allowed him, on the PC, to do group mailing. I thought BirdieSync would match the iPhone groups to the Thunderbird mailing lists.

Also, what we noticed right now as I am typing: some (iPhone) contacts which were listed in a group aren't listed there anymore (i.e., this particular group has now less contacts than before), although these contacts are still in the contact list. Moreover, these and other contacts now appear listed twice in the contact list, sometimes identically, sometimes not. Also, in the iPhone, some fields (e.g., address) contain some of the info duplicated, e.g. city or zip code appear twice.

We also tried, according to what you wrote, the morecols extension, and wrote in the "Catégorie" field of two Thunderbird contacts the word "Bureau", and synch'ed. I thought from what you said that "Bureau" would now appear as a (new) group on the iPhone with these two contacts in it, but it didn't. What am I missing?

Re: BirdieSync not authorized to access contacts

Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2013 10:29 am
by Birdy
The problem with iPhone is that there is notion of Distribution List. Unless I'm mistaken, you cannot send a mail to all the recipients of a contact group. That's why no mapping was done with Thunderbird distribution list. But that may be something to consider in the future.

The management of contact groups depend on the options that you checked in contact BirdieSync options in Thunderbird (menu "Tools/BirdieSync/Options...", "Contact" panel, "Group" tab). Did you check "Link address book to contact group" or not ? If you did, the contact on the iPhone will be put in the group whose name matches the Address book name in Thunderbird. So that may explain why a contact is moved to another group if you modified this contact in Thunderbird and then synchronized. For instance, if you synchronize a contact in iPhone Group B and synchronize it to Thunderbird default Address book A, (because there is no matching address book B) if you modify this contact in Thunderbird, it will be then moved to group A on the iPhone. To avoid this kind of problem, it would be better to have address books in Thunderbird with same names as the iPhone groups and select them to be synchronized, to avoid using the "default" address book when an iPhone group doesn't have any matching address book in Thunderbird.

Also if you checked "Link address book to contact group" option, the categories field in Thunderbird is ignored. The contact will be synchronized in the iPhone contact group whose name matches Thunderbird address book one. That may explain why "Bureau" was ignored in Thunderbird contact category.

Duplicates usually appear if you selected "Combine" option at first synchronization and if there are slight differences between the contacts on the iPhone and in Thunderbird. Or if the same contact is present in two different groups or address books. It would be necessary to identify in which way (which fields) these contacts are different. There is a tool to remove duplicates (Thunderbird menu Tools/BirdieSync/Remove duplicates). But only strictly identical items will be removed. So it won't work if there are slight differences.

When you say that the city or zip code appears twice. Do they have the same type ? (Home, Work, Other...)
Do you remember if you added these addresses in Thunderbird before you got these duplications ?
Do you also synchronize your iPhone contacts with another software ? (sometimes other softwares put data in fields with "Other" type, while BirdieSync only uses "Home" and "Work" type for instance)

Usually the most simple way to start a new synchronization is to set up your contacts in Thunderbird and when they are up-to-date in Thunderbird to do a reset of the contact synchronization (in BirdieSync Activation tab) and choose a "Replace" of your contacts on your iPhone (caution: it will erase all contacts on the iPhone and replace them with Thunderbird ones).