Tech Blog

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This is one of those posts that has to have a disclaimer. While I might fly by the seat of my pants and I'm comfortable messing with the inner workings of my OS, you might not be. Before you start messing around with stuff, read things, make backups, and stop if the little voice says "umm, I'm not so sure about this...".

One of the new and nifty features of Snow Leopard was supposed to be that now all Mac users, not just the iPhone and iPod Touch users among us, can sync there contacts with Google. Cool! I've been wanting needing this ever since I learned that it was possible for iPhone users--Mac OS X's Address Book Can Now Sync Google Contacts (Update: For iPhone Owners Only, UGH) - Address... - Mac OS X's Address Book Can Now Sync Google Contacts (Update: For iPhone Owners Only, UGH) - Address...--so following those directions I, erm, hacked my iPod preferences to make iTunes think I had an iPhone or iPod Touch. It never worked. Sure I had the option there in Address Book to sync with Google, but yeah nothing.

Okay so it didn't work. Fine. I can be patient. I can try other things.

Now Snow Leopard comes out and I read that I can natively sync both iCal and my Address Book with Google! Cool! So I try.

Google calendar to iCal ... no problem. In fact I didn't think I had it right, deleted my Google calendar and added it right back in, no sweat.

Google contacts to Address Book ... type in username and password. (huh I've had this option all along), click okay. and... nothing.

Darn.

Okay let's try again.

Still nothing.

Then I realize that, maybe playing around with one's iPod prefs might not be the brightest idea, huh?

So the next step here is where you start getting geeky. What I wanted to do is a) back up all my contacts from the Address Book (easy), b) delete all the contacts, then c) delete the preference files to see if I could sync with Google.

The exporting option is easy (choose address book archive). Preferences next, okay ... where are they? For Mac geeks (and this is a Mac oriented post at them moment) they are found in ~/Library/Preferences. Huh? What is ~? That's your home directory for your user id and really it looks like this:

Then opening the Library I find the Preferences folder then ...

I find the specific preferences I'm looking for. Most Mac apps are com.apple. confusing at first, okay later.

You'll notice that I have a few of the prefs there with "copy" in the file name. Here's what I did to get new fresh prefs:

1. Quit the app that I want new prefs for, e.g. iTunes for my iPod
2. Go into the prefs folder, click once on the file then press command-d to duplicate the file.
3. Then you can delete the original file (I use command-delete) and restart the app.

Most app will just recreate the prefs on first launch if they aren't there. Sometimes important info is stored there, like serial numbers, hence why if something goes seriously wrong you go back to the above steps, delete the bad prefs file and rename the good prefs file removing "copy" from the file name. Relaunching the then should give you your old prefs back.
So did it work?

Like a charm. In seconds, literally, my 3000 contacts in Gmail were in my Address Book. In short order I was getting rid of duplicates, deleting ones I didn't need any more, and generally cleaning house. All synced back up to Google. Then because my BlackBerry uses Google sync to sync my calendar and contacts, my Berry is now synced too!

For Windows folks, the same process works for you as well. Sometimes a little harder to find the right prefs file, but the theory is sound.