BirdieSync

Hi Birdie,

glad that the new version is released finally!!
as a user since version 1 I am completely lost with the new interface. My task seems as simple as possible: I only want to synchronize one of my Thunderbird addressbooks (which is NOT the default main addressbook) with my phone. They are named differently on phone and TB. Whatever I try I end up with hundreds of duplicates or false removals.
My first dumb approach was to select one addressbook in TB and one in phone in my sources: then I get the error that the are selected only in ONE device (yes: because the name on the other divice is different). What am I doing wrong?
Maybe a 'howto' for such SIMPLE tasks would help....

Best
Daniel

... furthermore Birdie shows MORE contacts including some duplicates that are NOT visible on the phone when selecting the remote device and address book init's right most column.

sorry, I was a bit quick: now I managed to connect the two differently named addressbooks. However: some strange duplicates where created: all of them contained German Umlauts: some in the names, some in the street names. In the duplicates the Umlauts were wrong (looked ANSI Umlauts interpreted as UTF-8 characters). But not all of them were duplicated.
Last issue I have: some of the pictures are lost, but only in TB, on device (HTC one) they still are displayed
Best
Daniel

Hello Daniel,

Configuration changed a lot with the new user interface compared to version 1.x. So it may take time to get used to it. Efforts will continue to be made to make the configuration process easier.

My first dumb approach was to select one addressbook in TB and one in phone in my sources: then I get the error that the are selected only in ONE device (yes: because the name on the other divice is different). What am I doing wrong?
Maybe a 'howto' for such SIMPLE tasks would help....

If you want an example on how to synchronize 2 address books, you may have a look at BirdieSync Help (menu Help/Help), section "Configuration/Examples".
Also how address books are matched is described in BirdieSync Help in section "Configuration/Folder matching".

By default address books are synchronized together if they have identical names. If you wish to synchronize together address books with different names on your mobile device and Thunderbird you have 2 possibilities:
- You both set these address books as "Main". (select an address book and click on gear menu button on the right above the address book list, and select "Set address book as Main")
- Or you can explicitly map address books together: click on the black folder with an arrow inside on the left above the address book list. Then you can map 2 address books together

.. furthermore Birdie shows MORE contacts including some duplicates that are NOT visible on the phone when selecting the remote device and address book init's right most column.

The fact that you see more contacts in the right panel in the Configuration view is because BirdieSync shows you what is really present in your Android account. The stock Android contact app merge/join contacts present in one or several accounts. It means that if several contacts have the same name for instance, Android will only present you a single contact in the stock Android contact app with it is the merging (for presentation) of all these contacts. In the user interface, when you look at the details of such a contact, it's usually possible to unjoin it.
I suggest you to have a look at "Configuration/Android accounts" section for more detailed explanation.

However: some strange duplicates where created: all of them contained German Umlauts: some in the names, some in the street names. In the duplicates the Umlauts were wrong (looked ANSI Umlauts interpreted as UTF-8 characters). But not all of them were duplicated.

I'll need to investigate on this. Special characters should normally be properly synchronized.

Last issue I have: some of the pictures are lost, but only in TB, on device (HTC one) they still are displayed

Could you check the maximum value of picture size for your Android device ? (in Configuration view, in Content, select your Android "Contacts", then click on the gear button to display the Contact configuration) The default value for Android might be 100KB and prevent some pictures from being synchronized.

Hi Birdie,

thanks for your swift and detailed response! In fact I haven't managed to find the examples: that's exactly what I was looking for!
After mapping address books explicitly everything worked.

Concerning the pictures: only approx. 5% of the pictures were 'lost', where only the mapping was lost: I re-attached them in TB, re-synced and everything was fine again.

Regarding the UTF-8 problem: that indeed was strange: for some contacts the name containing an Umlaut was 'scrambled' for others it was e.g. the name of town or street. All of them, where one field was scrambled where duplicates: they were present with correct and with wrong Umlaut. The Umlauts were displayed exactly (!) as if inserting an ANSI Umlaut into an UTF-8 coded file.

Unfortunately I cannot reproduce it anymore - and cleanup is already done in order to have my contacts clean again.

Best regards
Daniel