"Accounts and sync" in settings is gone (sgs3)

[alexhager]

Hello,

I'm clueless about an issue I have with a new Samsung Galaxy S3 that I gave my father to his birthday and that worked just fine until recently, including Google calendar and contact sync!

New contacts and calendar entries added on his S3 don't get synced to his Google account anymore. According to him, there is no settings entry "accounts and syncronisation" (or similar, in German it's called "Konten und Synchronisierung") anymore, where one can access the accounts to sync to.

He has no idea what he might have changed so that this menu entry disappeared. Unfortunately, he can't rule out that he has clicked on OK lately when some kind of update window came up on his SGS3 and that since then, sync doesn't work anymore. I'm afraid he can't remember anything more specific.

Could you imagine possible causes for the "settings>accounts and sync" setting to disappear and google sync not to work anymore? What could my father have done wrong? Is there any .apk that I could install to restore this menu item (the phone is not rooted and I'd prefer not to root it) and to get Google sync to work again?

I am sorry for not being more specific, but I don't know exactly what steps led to this situation (as he doesn't remember exactly either, unfortunately) and not being there with him, I am limited to his descriptions over the phone at the moment.

I really hope that someone has an idea what might have happened or where to look further.


Regards,

Alexander

 

[chanchan05]

I'm not on my PC right now so i can't check, but i seem to remember that the Samsung Kies software has a firmware repair/recovery option which you can try.

 

[alexhager]

Thanks a lot, I'll give it a try!

 

[alexhager]

Update: I have just installed KIES on my fathers computer (over the air through VPN). After he connected his SGS3, I looked for a way to repair the firmware. All I can see is an option for an emergency restore (as far as I understood, for cases where a FW update fails in the middle of the process) and an option to update or initialize the firmware. Updating doesn't apply as the installed FW and the most recent FW are the same (his phone seems to be up to date) and as far as I understand "initialization", it deletes everything that is on the phone. I guess that the only way will indeed be to restore the FW from scratch (or: to initialize) at the cost of reinstalling and reconfiguring everything again (which is quite a lot in his case) ? I'll probably use some Backup software (Titanium seems to be quite popular) after having restored and reconfigured everything.. Again, thanks for you suggestion and in case you can think of anything less invasive, I'd appreciate - I won't "initialise" the phone before tomorrow or tuesday anyway, so any other idea would be very much appreciated!

 

[annebrooks64]

Update: I have just installed KIES on my fathers computer (over the air through VPN). After he connected his SGS3, I looked for a way to repair the firmware. All I can see is an option for an emergency restore (as far as I understood, for cases where a FW update fails in the middle of the process) and an option to update or initialize the firmware. Updating doesn't apply as the installed FW and the most recent FW are the same (his phone seems to be up to date) and as far as I understand "initialization", it deletes everything that is on the phone. I guess that the only way will indeed be to restore the FW from scratch (or: to initialize) at the cost of reinstalling and reconfiguring everything again (which is quite a lot in his case) ? I'll probably use some Backup software (Titanium seems to be quite popular) after having restored and reconfigured everything.. Again, thanks for you suggestion and in case you can think of anything less invasive, I'd appreciate - I won't "initialise" the phone before tomorrow or tuesday anyway, so any other idea would be very much appreciated!

In the settings menu there should be a couple of things you can try. Back up and reset, don't use factory reset unless you want to wipe the phone, tick the backup box. It actually sounds to me as if he's done a system update in which case accounts and sync has changed and is now simply accounts. You will now find a list of all the accounts associated with your phone eg gmail, facebook, dropbox etc. Just tap on each one and click sync now at the bottom of the screen. That should work.

 

[alexhager]

Thanks, annebrooks, for your suggestions! You are probably right, accounts and sync seems to have become "accounts" and as we were going through his google account there, we found everything to be checked in order to be synced. Triggered by your suggestions to tap to sync, I told my father (still without actually being there) to look for a setting that lets him choose his standard calendar. He found none, but when creating a new calendar entry, there is an option to choose among calendars ("own calendar" and his google calendar). As it seems, he had chosen "own calendar" BY MISTAKE a few days ago when creating a new entry. And it seems to me that the phone will simply remember this choice for the next entries until the user chooses otherwise, which is kind of equal to setting a standard calendar imo. Anyway, I told him to choose his google calendar once when creating an entry and to create his other new entries again. Now, google is the "standard calendar" again and syncing of new entries works as expected again. Thanks again for all your suggestions and my apologies for the confusion