Android, Gmail, and Thunderbird

October 15, 2008

With the knowledge that Iâ€™ll be moving to the T-Mobile G1 in the near future, I started thinking about my contact list. Yeah, the one I have in Outlook that I sync to my current Windows Mobile phone. But wait, thereâ€™s no sync client for Android phones.

However, in the case of the T-Mobile G1, it will sync itâ€™s contact list with my Gmail Contacts over the 3G connection. Ok, I can live with that â€“ it actually works out better in the end. More on that later. With that realization, I started thinking about how best to edit and update all those contacts I have in Gmail.

For a long time I had looked for some kind of utility to sync from Outlook to Gmail Contacts. I was hopeful when early last year Google themselves released a Outlook to Gmail Calendar sync tool. Alas there was no contact sync utility, just some API extensions to make it possible.

Since Iâ€™ve been playing evaluating Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook on and off for a year or so, it occurred to me that there may be a way to sync Gmail items to Thunderbird via Add-Ons. Sure enough, they exist. With a Gmail Contact Add-On and a Gmail Calendar Add-On, Iâ€™m able to edit and update these times fast and easy via a great offline client.

The great part of all this is that because the G1 automatically syncs Gmail, Contacts and Calendar â€“ all my PIM data will now effortlessly be in sync from PC to Web to Mobile. No matter where I go to send an email, make a call, or view my schedule, it will always be in sync.

Do you know of any interesting Google or Gmail related Add-Ons for Thunderbird that would make it even better? Let us know what you find that works!

Now to just wait for the G1 to be deliveredâ€¦

Conversation Tags: add-on, android, calendar, contacts, g1, gmail, google, mozilla, outlook, plugin, sync, t-mobile, thunderbird

Categories: google, mobile communications, mobility, plugins, software

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Rick Mahn

Hi Caio,
To answer your question - sure! Simply don't set up the email portion of Thunderbird. Interestingly, the mail and calendar portions of Thunderbird are separate - meaning they don't rely on each other to function.

You can set up the calendar portion without configuring the email to use Gmail, you could use a different email provider instead if you wanted to.

Cheers,
Rick

Dale

hi i just wanted to point out that the calender feature is best through Sunbird(another mozilla prodict) i am getting an Android phone in the near future and want to know if your email from thunderbird will sync to the phone as well. Thansk for any info you can give me on this
Dale

Rick Mahn

Since Android is powered by Google (GMail), as long as you use IMAP in Thunderbird, the email will be in sync with the server on both the Android phone and Thunderbird.

Caio

Hello,
I'm looking for the android calendar features, and everywhere I read about Gmail + Android + Thunderbird sync.
But, what about a sync without Gmail?
Is it possible to directly synchronize the android calendar with the calendar used by thunderbird (lightning)?

Thank you