Hi Nick, In scenarios involving duplicates and incompatible naming conventions there's no way for Spanning Sync to report what's going to happen without actually syncing. On the Mac side, Spanning Sync goes through Apple Sync Services which makes all the decisions about identity matching, conflicts, etc, and Apple Sync Services doesn't have such a mode.
However, the behavior is fairly predictable by us humans. If a contact exists on Google and the Mac and you're syncing for the first time, it will maintain a one-to-one relationship with its counterpart if and only if the names match. That is to say, if it's a person contact then it needs to have exactly 2 names or 2+ names with well-known titles and/or suffixes. Business contacts only have a single name so they always match up. Otherwise, you'll get a duplicate. If you're thinking to yourself how ridiculous it is to have to worry about such a thing, you're absolutely right. We've gone to great lengths to deal with Google's decision not to use formatted names. At one point we inserted invisible characters in the name in order to track the name formatting across sync but that invisible character would show up on some devices/ browsers and turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. It's just really unfortunate that Google has taken this road. I do have one other suggestion and that's Spanning Backup. You can always back up your contacts or certain groups of contacts. If the sync doesn't go well then it's trivial to restore the contacts using Spanning Backup. It's currently in beta, but very stable. Check it out: http://spanningbackup.com . Other than that, I'm out of ideas. Good luck! -- Larry Hendricks [email protected] http://spanningsync.com On Jun 2, 2:44 pm, mooky <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks for the suggestions so far. > > Is there no way at all to get a report out of spanning sync of what it > is going to do - without actually doing it? > Nuking and setting up all my gtalk contacts again is not really > something I want to do... > > -Nick > > On Jun 2, 5:01 am, Larry Hendricks <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > Sorry, yes, I should have mentioned that "replace data on Google" will > > wipe out any Google groups and email-only contacts that you have in > > Google. However, you can export entire Google contact groups before > > doing the RDOG and then import them again afterward. > > -- > > Larry Hendricks > > [email protected]http://spanningsync.com > > > On Jun 1, 6:51 pm, mooky <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > * From the Advanced tab of the Spanning Sync pref pane, select > > > > "Replace Data on Google" and replace the contacts on Google with the > > > > contacts on your Mac. Now both sides are clean and should be > > > > identical. > > > > Will that not run the risk of removing gtalk contacts? In my first > > > attempt, I lost a few googletalk contacts, I presumed due to me trying > > > to clean up duplicates on my mac - and that deleting the wrong contact > > > on google... > > > > -Nick > > > > On Jun 1, 5:22 am, Larry Hendricks <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > This might help: > > > > > * Sync your contacts with Spanning Sync. Now all the potentially > > > > missing details and contacts from Google are on your Mac, including > > > > duplicates and naming errors (but that's OK). > > > > * Turn Spanning Sync syncing off (or set the schedule to Manual). > > > > * Run Contacts Cleaner from Spanning Tools for Mac and let it merge/ > > > > fix all the problems that it finds. Now you have on your Mac a "clean" > > > > set of data which includes all the details from Google and Address > > > > Book. > > > > * From the Advanced tab of the Spanning Sync pref pane, select > > > > "Replace Data on Google" and replace the contacts on Google with the > > > > contacts on your Mac. Now both sides are clean and should be > > > > identical. > > > > > -- > > > > Larry Hendricks > > > > [email protected]http://spanningsync.com > > > > > On May 29, 1:47 pm, mooky <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > Thanks. That helps me sort out my Mac contacts. > > > > > > The problem I still have is that I dont know what is going to happen > > > > > when I try sync with google. > > > > > > Google will have many of the same contacts I have on my mac. > > > > > Some google contacts will have details that are no longer correct. > > > > > Some might have details I dont have on my mac > > > > > Google will also have quite a few duplicates (even though I have used > > > > > its duplicate detection) > > > > > Im uncertain how all these will be merged/sync'd with my mac. > > > > > > Last time I tried to run the spanning sync, I had all sorts of > > > > > unexpected results - many dups and some gtalk contacts disappeared > > > > > altogether... > > > > > > Id really like to be able to run the spanning sync without making any > > > > > changes - and get a report of what it thinks its going to do. Then I > > > > > can go an manually fix the contacts that are going to result in messy > > > > > results after the sync. > > > > > > -Nick > > > > > > On May 24, 3:56 pm, Larry Hendricks <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > "Messy" problems with contact syncing mostly occur due to Google's > > > > > > inflexible naming conventions (contacts only have one name) combined > > > > > > with contacts that have unpredictable names. Spanning Tools for Mac > > > > > > can help with this. The free version will identify the problematic > > > > > > contacts, the paid version will fix them. > > > > > > >http://spanningtools.com/mac/ > > > > > > > Hope that helps. > > > > > > -- > > > > > > Larry Hendricks > > > > > > [email protected]http://spanningsync.com > > > > > > > On May 23, 4:38 am, mooky <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > > Hi, > > > > > > > > I have about 400 contacts in my address book - and about 800 in my > > > > > > > google contacts (500 in MyContacts). > > > > > > > > Last time I tried to run the sync for contacts (1 yr ago), I > > > > > > > ended up > > > > > > > making a bit of a mess - ended up with loads of duplicate > > > > > > > contacts. > > > > > > > > Are there some steps I can take to avoid duplicate contacts? > > > > > > > Is there a way I can do a "dry run" - just get SpanningSync to > > > > > > > generate me a report of what it plans to do? That way I could > > > > > > > review > > > > > > > all the actions & decide which things I dont want it to do - and > > > > > > > manually fix the data so that it doesnt do it. > > > > > > > > The difficulty is, that once a mess is made, undoing it is very > > > > > > > difficult. For example if you resolve a duplicate in the Address > > > > > > > book > > > > > > > by deleting a redundant one - this can result in it being removed > > > > > > > from > > > > > > > my google contacts and from my gtalk contacts - which I really > > > > > > > dont > > > > > > > want. > > > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > > > > -Nick > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the > > > > > > > Google Groups "Spanning Sync" group. > > > > > > > To post to this group, send email to > > > > > > > [email protected]. > > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > > > > > > [email protected]. > > > > > > > For more options, visit this group > > > > > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/spanningsync?hl=en. > > > > > > > -- > > > > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > > > > > > Groups "Spanning Sync" group. > > > > > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > > > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > > > > > [email protected]. > > > > > > For more options, visit this group > > > > > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/spanningsync?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Spanning Sync" group. 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