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Friday, February 24, 2012

Android Phone Stops Syncing Contacts to Gmail

My Android phone stopped automatically syncing my contacts with Gmail.  Even if I went through the Settings menu and chose to do a manual sync, it would go through the motions but wouldn't update my contacts, and I also noticed that the date/time of the last sync wouldn't change.

I finally found the answer.  Many thanks to the user Peaser on this website:
http://androidforums.com/eris-support-troubleshooting/81579-fix-google-contacts-not-syncing.html

The solution:

In your phone, go to Settings, Applications, Manage Applications, and under the All tab, choose Contacts Storage.  Then push the "Clear Data" button.

Then resync your phone to Gmail:

In your phone, go to Settings, Accounts & Sync.  Under Managed Accounts, choose Google, and press the "Sync Now" button.

Followup (3/2/2012) 
I wanted to share a followup to this story.  A few days later I noticed my contacts weren't syncing again.  The behavior was slightly different.  Previously the date/time on the last sync didn't change.  This time it would update the date/time of the last sync but wouldn't actually sync the differences between my phone and Gmail.

So, I did this:
  • Settings
  • Accounts & Sync
  • Select your Google account
  • Uncheck "Sync Contacts"
---
  • Settings
  • Applications
  • Manage Applications
  • All (The All Applications Tab)
  • Select Contact Storage (I'm told that on some phones it is listed as "Google Contacts Sync")
  • Press the Clear Data button (which purges all contacts from your phone)
---
  • Settings
  • Accounts & Sync
  • Select your Google account
  • Check "Sync Contacts" (which should cause it to re-download your contacts from Gmail)


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for that
    I had previously FOUR times had to factory reset my wildfireS to get Gmail etc to start syncing again
    Clearing contacts and calendar data and then syncing did the trick
    Thanks again
    Paul

    ReplyDelete
  2. I did what you told above + turn off-on my Galaxy Pocket. And the problem is solved.
    Thank you very much !

    ReplyDelete