Tag Archives: sync

getting google contacts into iphone ipad

Computer Aid Posted on by

While setting up google services for a customer who owned an iphone and an ipad, I had some strange problem making google contacts synchronise with the idevices.

Since I have setup countless android devices, I assumed that setting up accounts would be similar, and would also be logical.

It wasn’t!

I thought that setting up the email account would also take care of contacts and calendar.

Here is what you see when setting up an email account on an iphone:

The obvious choice for a google account would be to pick gmail.

But the correct choice, if you also want to synchronise google contacts and google calendar, would be to pick Microsoft exchange instead!

For full instructions on how to setup your google account on an iphone or ipad, take a look at:

iphone ipad google

or: iphone about

syncing many google calendars with iphone ipad

Computer Aid Posted on by

I had a customer that had a few different email accounts, as well as an iphone, ipad, and MS outlook running on a laptop.

She tried to merge everything together (emails, address book, and calendar) using icloud, but couldn’t get it to work, so I decided to sync using googles cloud services (which I have been using successfully for over 2 years!).

All 3 systems had their own little problems.

But in this case, I found it difficult to get the iphone and ipad to synchronise all the shared calendars… the Apple devices only showed the main calendar entries… but none of the other linked calendars.

I re-created the i-device accounts a few times, waited 24 hours, checked the settings, but the iphone and ipad just wouldn’t show the other shared calendars.

Until I discovered this little hint:

After the google account has been setup on the i-device, and has synced at least once…

From the iphone (or ipad), you use the built-in Safari browser to go to:

m.google.com/sync

At that point, sign in to your gmail google account, and select the iphone / ipad to which you want to sync extra calendars, then select the calendars you want to appear on your iphone.

Now when you go into the calendar and take a look at the different calendars available, you will see all the calendars that you selected previously. Now just tick the ones you want to make visible.

I wish there was an easier way to do this…

syncing Google Contacts: surname last

Computer Aid Posted on by

I’ve been going through my customer contact list (currently in Google Contacts), and spent some time exporting my MYOB contact list and merging it with my google contacts, in order to get a consistent list.

After having completed the whole process, I eventually realised that google sorts names differently from most people:

Names are assumed to be First/Given name first, then middle name(s), then Last/Surname.

Unfortunately, I only realised this after I had everything sorted…

So my list has names like: Blogs, Joe

But on my WM6.1 smart phone, it results in names Joe, Blogs,

Note the extra comma.

While my Nokia 6220 Classic has names like: Blogs, Joe (but when you look at the contact details, it breaks it down into:

Last Name: Joe

First Name: Blogs,

But there is some good news (for me at least): it actually doesn’t matter much.

A search for something like “joe” or “blogs” on either WM6, Nokia, or Google Contacts, will result in the correct entry being found.

Maybe one day, Google will add the ability to intelligently specify how the name field is to be split.