Poll: Are You Using Google Sync? How Reliable is it?

by Ronen Halevy on Sep 4th, 2009 at 11:09 am EST

Recently I have had a few friends complain to me that Google Sync (m.google.com/sync) is screwing up their contacts and calendars. Most of the issues seem to be on the BlackBerry Tour OS. I am on a BES so I don’t really have a need for Google Sync but I decided to look into it.

Turns out that there are quite a few people having issues with the software. It has been blamed for causing everything from duplicate contacts to sending meeting cancelations randomly. This thread on BlackBerry Forums goes into quite a few of the issues.

So I decided to run this poll to see if this is a widespread issue. Please elaborate in the comments! Some of this may be alleviated in the future when RIM releases contact sync for BIS in 2.8 this month.

How is Google Sync Working for you?

I have had no problems (39%, 246 Votes)
I have been having issues with contacts or calendar sync (32%, 202 Votes)
I don't use Google Sync (18%, 116 Votes)
What is Google Sync? (11%, 74 Votes)

Total Voters: 638

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 and is filed under Polls.
Tags: Google Sync, Poll

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17 Comments to “Poll: Are You Using Google Sync? How Reliable is it?”

Posted by: Dman
September 4, 2009 at 11:30 am EST

I have only had one problem – deleting a singular appointment within a series on Google Calendar led to the entire series wiping out when synced. Then again I have shifted ALL of my appointments to Google Calendar, so I don’t have two calendar sets (Outlook and GC) to worry about. I suspect that’s where most of the issues come from.

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Posted by: Amir Saad
September 4, 2009 at 12:05 pm EST

When I first heard of it when google voice was available for Blackberry, I couldn’t sync my calendar at all. After 3 weeks it just worked fine since then.
As far as I could tell it had nothing to do with OS updates like .282 or .297…etc.

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Posted by: Corinne
September 4, 2009 at 12:09 pm EST

For the most part it’s ok. I always for get to put things into my calendar antwway’ so if there are issues 3 don’t notice. I don’t sync my contaCts though because it isn’t one way and I don’t need thousands of people in my address book.

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Posted by: tons-q
September 4, 2009 at 12:19 pm EST

I’ve using it forever since I got my BlackBerry.
Worked like a charm!
I’m updating my contact from both
Gmail and BlackBerry. Calendar also from both web and BlackBerry.
No issue so far.
I use BlackBerry Bold. OS .167 at first through .297 now.

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Posted by: mh
September 4, 2009 at 12:33 pm EST

Google sync is very reliable, but I’ve had two problems with it:
1) When I first set it up it created numerous duplicate contacts. I resolved it by clearing all the contacts on my Blackberry and cleaning up my google contacts and doing a fresh sync. Since then, no more contact problems.

2) When you remove a calendar event from google it will remove it from your Blackberry too. When it’s remove from your Blackberry, your device will send out cancellation e-mail to all attendees WITHOUT ASKING YOU!
If you delete an event ON THE BLACKBERRY, the device will prompt you if you want to e-mail attendees, but if the deletion occurs through a sync, the Blackberry will not ask your permission. I deleted a work conference event from my google, and my whole department got a cancellation notice coming from my personal gmail account (!!!!!) fuck!!

In addition, since google sync removes all events older than 2 weeks from your BlackBerry, all attendees will get cancellation notices two weeks after the event!!! ha! fucking insane!
Anyway, I have no problems with google sync as long as I don’t use the invite attendees function. Sucks balls!
The problem is not clearly Google’s fault. It’s the fact that BlackBerry does not ask your goddamn permission before sending out an e-mail from your own inbox! Natrually, you can count on RIM to ignore this shit in their next OS update.

[I started a thread about this last year on google help http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?fid=06e1bef002898664000471ba4f802673&hl=en see how many people are complaining...]

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Posted by: dkonigs
September 4, 2009 at 1:18 pm EST

Whenever I’ve tried using Google Sync, its managed to screw up my calendar. Particularly, it seems to not correctly translate “all day events” between the two systems. It seems to just configure them as normal events with an all-day (sort-of) duration, which looks very messed up. While its been a while now since I last tried the app, my calendar is still littered with screwed up events from it.

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Posted by: SOADFreak1989
September 4, 2009 at 1:19 pm EST

The only thing I noticed is when you make a reoccurring event, it just makes all separate events instead of 1 reoccurring event.

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Posted by: Justin
September 4, 2009 at 1:22 pm EST

My wife used Google Sync for a while on her Storm….not a good experience. Calendar items would get deleted randomly. Every once in a while it would send out calendar invitations that had already been sent out. She put up with it for a while, but eventually had enough and deleted it.

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Posted by: Justin N
September 4, 2009 at 3:02 pm EST

I’ve never been able to get Google Sync to work on my phone. I’ve had it work for a while and then give me errors until I uninstalled and reinstalled, where it would work again initially and then start giving me errors again. I finally just gave up. Honestly, the reason I was trying to use it is because I’m on a Mac and couldn’t find a good way to get my phone and Mac in sync. Google has a nice application to keep iCal and Google Calendar in sync so I figured if I could sync my phone and Google calendar then everything would stay in sync. With RIM releasing the mac desktop I doubt I will try to use Google Sync anymore.

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Posted by: Bob
September 4, 2009 at 4:45 pm EST

same problems as above – individual entries on the BB for recurring events in Google, all day events in google blocking the whole day on the BB (ugly when it spans) a couple of days. Most annoyingly it loses its marbles when re-syncing after say a software update on the BB – duplicates events and ignores others. The Storm’s needed a lot of updates.

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Posted by: AdamG
September 4, 2009 at 5:22 pm EST

In my experience, Google Sync for BB works exactly as well as it claims it does. The limitations of the app are stated by Google, recurring events becoming multiple single events, etc. As far as event attendees being emailed cancellation notices when you delete an event, I’ve never had this situation. Perhaps if you adjust your Settings in Google Calendar in desktop you will find a possible fix. In my Settings/Calendars/(YourCalendarName)/Notifications, I only have “New Invitations” by email and “Daily Agenda” by email boxes checked. I think it’s the ..Changed, Cancelled and Replies box Settings that are sending out the emails to your meeting invitees.

Back to the app itself and how well it works. I’ve never had any real trouble, at all, as long as I follow one rule, which is “Have one point of origin for all the data, the first time you sync.” Meaning, get all your data the way you want it in Gmail/GCal desktop, and have a completely empty Contacts and Calendar on your BB. Or, vice-versa. Then, sign in to Google Sync BB and sync it. No probs after that. I even had Google Sync for BB AND Funambol Sync(just Contacts, Tasks and Memos-for my to sync to my Outlook) running flawlessly at the same time by having just one point of origin and letting the apps populate the remote servers.

A tip for getting the address fields of your Contacts to populate correctly on your BB, when you add contacts to Gmail desktop, is to enter addresses in this form:
Address 1
Address 2 (leave a blank line here if no address 2)
City
State
Zip
Country

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Posted by: firegrove
September 4, 2009 at 10:43 pm EST

It seems to work with some things and not others. Regardless whether it works or not, it always gives me an error stating that I’m using another sync program.

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Posted by: Jeremy
September 5, 2009 at 12:51 pm EST

Make sure you set the email address that you sync to as your default in options…

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Posted by: InvaderGzim
September 8, 2009 at 7:48 am EST

Works most of the time…

Had issues when I upgraded my 8330 to the “approved” 4.5.0.138 OS version…
Duplicated my entire calendar upon initial sync… Since it seemed to treat my OLD information as my “local” calendar… then sync’d the real stuff from Google Calendar…

Had to delete all events from the local calendar, then resync again…

Sometimes, events from my Curve don’t make it over to Googls correctly… other times they don’t come from Google over to Curve…

But, overall, it’s nice to only have one calendar,…

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Posted by: Ricardo
September 8, 2009 at 9:29 am EST

Google Sync breaks recurrency and every recurrence becomes an appointment apart from the others.

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Posted by: Devesh
September 9, 2009 at 10:26 am EST

wish Google Sync would let you select which account to sync calendar with and not just select the “default” account to sync with

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