Help Managing contacts between phone and comp

[Atax]

So I just recently switched from a Window Mobile phone to the Captivate and I am loving it thus far. Aside from the standard gripes about gps i have nothing to complain.

I am however having trouble comprehending how google syncs my contacts. I have my contacts set up exactly how i want them on my google account online i.e. co workers freinds family grouping. I would like my phone to display the contacts in the same fashion, but it seems the google sync is only one way from my phone to my account and not the other way around.

How can i get my contacts to sync from my google account so that they show up as i have them set up online without having to do every individual one on the phone.

p.s. if i am not thinking like an android user here please correct me, ive been with windows mobile for a long time and am used to painstaking procedures for simple tasks, so if im overlooking something please tell me.

Thanks.

 

[JavaBrewer]

+1 - My online Google contact group settings did not transfer to the phone. Rather than getting my 500+ contacts arranged in groups they came over as a flat list. Is there a an app or something to handle this?

 

[sremick]

+1 - My online Google contact group settings did not transfer to the phone. Rather than getting my 500+ contacts arranged in groups they came over as a flat list. Is there a an app or something to handle this?

Not that I'm aware of. While the phone itself supports Groups for native contacts, when you sync to your Gmail contacts it doesn't translate the Gmail contact groups to the phone's native groups. Instead, all your Gmail contacts get organized into a single "Google" group on the phone's contacts to differentiate them from contacts synced from other sources.

 

[JavaBrewer]

Sounds like Google needs to get their stuff in order. I mean come on...this issue isn't exactly out of left field...support your own APIs guys...

 

[garudatx]

Not that I'm aware of. While the phone itself supports Groups for native contacts, when you sync to your Gmail contacts it doesn't translate the Gmail contact groups to the phone's native groups. Instead, all your Gmail contacts get organized into a single "Google" group on the phone's contacts to differentiate them from contacts synced from other sources.

This is exactly the problem I am having, and have figured out this much.
What really gets me is that the contacts that are all now listed under the "Google" group don't even have an option to add them to another (useful) group.
And I cannot tell the phone to move them to be regular (native) contacts, so I can add them to a useful group. At least I cannot figure out how.