Google’s Missing Sync: Contacts

May 29, 2008

Ok, I’m quite happy that Google released a Google Calendar Sync tool for Microsoft Outlook. Really happy.

Sure, I’m a Microsoft guy and have been for quite awhile. Because of that I’ve got significant investments in money & time in the mainline business products, namely Windows, Office, and Windows Mobile.

On the flip side, I’ve moved a number of tasks and work that I do to web based systems. GMail is obviously one of those, and earlier this year moved my calendar to GCal.

Since late March it’s been great to sync GCal with Outlook – works darn well. Now, since I use GMail (and Google Hosted Domains), I need to have all my contacts there & up to date as well. Also, there are dozens of contacts in GMail that I would like to sync to my Windows Mobile phone via ActiveSync. Currently, there is no easy way to do that.

Nearly the same time that Google released it’s GCal-Outlook sync tool, it announced a Google Contacts Sync API. I’m sure there are good things coming for everyone on nearly every platform for syncing Google Contacts with the major mail clients – at least I hope there is!

So Google, can you drop a few hints, or some info on plans to release a Google Contact Sync tool? We’d be very grateful.

Conversation Tags: calendar, contacts, gcal, gmail, google, microsoft, mobile, office, online, outlook, rickmahn, sync, tools, windows

Categories: opinion

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John Hoffman

Simplicity is a complete jigsaw.

Guy M

Hello, Just to inform you that Syncmycal is a very good tool doing this, I have been using it for quite some time now, the contact sync functionality is new since last year. Does an excellent job at syncing calendars too and is cheaper than Kigoo, alongside the fact that it can handle multiple accounts, even a mix of regular google and google app accounts.

Rick Mahn

Mat, thanks for pointing that out and your post about it. This is great news for folks using Exchange/ActiveSync for their mobile device. I happened to move on to the T-Mobile G1 late last year, so syncing Gmail & such is a natural for me now.

Cheers!

Mat Smith

Just spreading the word - slightly off-topic to your post, but Google now supports Exchange-style sync to mobile devices for GCal and Contacts. Maybe you know this already. But it's very, very cool especially if you use Windows Mobile with a data connection. As far as I know, there is still no contact sync with Outlook, which is a shame. I made a blog post about it here: http://hazymat.co.uk/2009/02/11/google-brings-u...

Rick Mahn

I'm not in consensus with you on Plaxo doing a better job. It's one-way Google sync was the show stopper for me.

The only thing I've found, and this is very recent, is Companion Link, which syncs Outlooks PIM data to multiple different programs and online services. This is the first one that simply works as a "set it and forget it" sync tool for me since I used ActiveSync for Windows Mobile. I just dropped $30 for the product, cause it was that good.

Bill

If Plaxo doesn't work with Google then isn't that a gigantic flaw??

Chris W

Plaxo does a better job than all of these. The only problem is it doesn't work if you use Google's enterprise Email.

Ariel Di Stefano

We just launched KiGoo, a free tool that allows Google users to fully manage (create, read, update and delete) their Calendar and Contacts from MS Outlook.

Also KiGoo manage the Free Busy information of your Gmail contacts for appointments if they shared their FB status.

Currently we support Windows XP and office 2007.

You could download it from http://www.getkigoo.com