Hey guys (and girls, transgender, intersex, queer and however you construct or deconstruct your gender identity)
So, I looked around for that general discussion of Google contacts. I don't want to begin a discussion of data safety (should your friends' data be in the hands of google? Is "the cloud" a safe place? etc) or dogma (is syncing good, bad, inevitable); I want to put my thoughts out there and see if I'm missing something that someone has already thought out.
My outset is this:
I want to sync contacts.
The days of "this data is exclusively on my phone" and "this data is exclusively in my e-mail" is over for me. But there is still a difference between what is useful to me on a super-portable device (handset) used not least for calling, texting and on-the-fly data checks, and a less portable device (laptop) used not least for writing and overview.
My contacts contain many kinds of data, multiple phone numbers, addresses, b'days, notes and stuff.
The following is my findings:
- Android seems to think that syncing contacts with Exchange is bad. Maybe it's a Google vs. Microsoft thing. I don't know. Can't make it work for contacts unless using a third party client.
- When syncing contacts with Google I can only sync ALL my gmail contacts or NONE.
My dilemma is this:
I can't sync with either platform without a mess!
In the blue corner: I have in my Outlook Exchange my telephone contacts. This is because my previous phone was WinMo, not because I love Outlook.
Syncing: Either via a third party client (which has yet to work for me) or I can stuff them in a CSV-file and put them on my handset - but then I can't sync them and every subsequent update will only exist on the handset.
In the red corner: I have in my Gmail account a huge mess of e-mail receipients. Syncing between handset and Google is hella easy. But many, many of the Gmail contacts I very seldom use, and only for e-mailing.
To sum up rhetorically: Am I the only one to think that my handset Contact list should consist of SOME of my Gmail contacts (e.g. those with a phone number attached to them) rather than ALL of them?
I think I need a separate site: contacts.google.com where I can decide what contacts I want to share between which platforms, sites and clients.
</Rant>
Now help me: I want to leave Exchange behind. I want to sync with Google. Not one-off import from Google, but sync. How do I NOT get every last person I ever sent an e-mail to clogging up my handset's phonebook?
Your views and answers below
HC
PS: I feel silly posting this under the "Hero" subforum since this is much more of a general Google related discussion. But I was told this'd be the place. Feel free to move the thread