[acterry]

As most everyone here knows, Synergy with GMail pulls in records from "All Contacts" instead of "My Contacts." The result for heavy GMail users is a contact record for virtually everyone you have ever emailed.

After about an hour of messing around, I was finally able to figure out how to get email and clean contacts from my GMail account.

If anyone is interested in setting this up on their phone, please follow the directions closely. There is a reason for every step. There are a few places that you can get tripped up.


Theory: Use Synergy with Nuevasync's Exchange server emulation to sync Contacts and Synergy with setup GMail in the Pre for email and calendar.

End Results: Exchange Server Profile on Pre syncing via Nuevasync Google for Contacts and Calendar. Pre getting email directly from GMail and a useless Exchange email account that can't be deleted. (I suppose everything can't be perfect.)

References:

Palm Pre Manual: SG Pre UserGuide
page 144 - Stop Sync of Contacts with an Online Account
page 144 - Connect to an online calendar through the Palm Synergy feature
page 155 - Stop Sync of Calendar With an Online Account


Requirements:

• Pre updated to 1.0.2 (may not be required -- but it made the error messages in my trial and error process informative)
• GMail account (of course)
• Free nuevasync.com account (let's you use Active Sync to sync phone with GMail, Google Calendar, and Plaxo) Go set one up after reading the note below.
• Verify that you preferences on nuevasync.com are setup to give it access to your GMail and Google Calendar account. Pretty straightforward setup.

Important Notes:

• In order to get around a Pre Limitation/Safeguard, the email address on your NuevaSync account MUST not match your GMail address. Since you cannot change your email address, I had to setup a new NuevaSync account.
• Workaround Tip: Most people don't know that GMail disregards periods in your GMail email address. If you email address is username@gmail.com, then mail sent to user.name@gmail.com also gets delivered to your account. Give it a try with your own address if you like. Knowing this, I created my new Nuevasync account and just put a period in my normal Gmail email address. Before doing that I tried, myusername@googlemail.com ... but the Pre knows that gmail.com and googlemail.com are the same thing.
• I'm not sure if the tip above works with Google Apps accounts.

Steps: I don't think that the order really matters. But I'm going to assume that most of you have your GMail account already setup. So I'll make that step one.

Step 1: If not already done, setup your Google account on your Pre. Doesn't matter if you add it from the email, contacts, or calendar app.

Step 2: Go to preferences under the contacts app. Open the Google account and press "Remove Account" .... don't be scared ... it only removes it from the contacts app. It will not affect your mail settings for Google. Refer to page 144 of the User's Guide for verification. Once you hit "Remove" you'll be taken back to the preference screen. The Google account will continue to be shown for a couple of minutes while the Pre removes those contacts from your phone.

Step 3: From the preferences panel of the Contacts App, choose "Add an account." Choose Exchange Server as the type. When you are prompted for your email address and password, choose "Manual Setup" from the menu in the upper left-hand corner.

Use these settings:

Email Address: The email address on your NuevaSync account. Remember, this must not exactly match your GMail account. If it does, you will get an error saying there is already an account for that email address on the phone.

Incoming Mail Server: https://www.nuevasync.com
Domain: LEAVE BLANK (this differs from the nuevasync instructions for Windows Mobile)

Username: Your Nuevasync Username
Password: Your Nuevasync Password

Once that is all entered .... press Sign in and cross your fingers. If it says that your username/password do not match ... make sure that you left the domain box empty and verify your username/password.

If you get some other kind of syncing problem. Click the troubleshooting link from within your account on nuevasync.com. There is a link within it that will show you the syncing errors with your account. Make sure that you have authorized Nuevasync to access your Google account.

Step 5: Go to preferences from within the CALENDAR app and remove the Google Calendar account.

Unfortunately, you cannot remove the Exchange account. Unlike other account types, removing an Exchange Account removes it from Calendar, Contacts, and Mail.

For this same reason, you can't delete the Exchange account from within the mail app. I just removed it's Inbox as a favorite and sorted my accounts so that mail profile was at the bottom.

IMO, small price to pay to not have an extra 1000 trash contacts from GMail. Maybe a future update will allow us to define what the Exchange account should since with.

Hopefully this directions are clear and I didn't leave anything out. I'll be back in 2-3 hours in case anyone has any questions.

[Dieter Bohn]

Excellent tip, but question: why use Nuevasync when gmail exchange does it directly?

[tialoc]

This is a workaround and not a fix.

With that said, let me say Good job! But it doesn't address the issue with the native sync issues in the Palm Pre (Unless it's a google problem, doubtful).

Hopefully someone will address the Synergy problem with contacts.

[acterry]

Dieter,

Thanks ..... I looked at the GMail exchange (Google ActiveSync) and almost suggested it as another option in the write-up, but I left it out as not to confuse people. I didn't try it, however. Since it doesn't do mail syncing, I would still need to setup GMail IMAP. Since the same email address would need to be on both Synergy profiles, I figured the Pre wouldn't let me do it. I didn't think that I could trick it by adding a random period in the email address. May have been a bad assumption.

Tialoc,

You're right it doesn't fix the native issues. I was just interested in finding a way to make it work better for me in the meantime. I'm a heavy GMail user and I didn't want those extra 1000+ contacts on my phone. When they fix the NativeSync issue, I will reevaluate my setup. I spent the time doing the writeup in case other were interested in a workaround as well.

[tialoc]

Nothing wrong with an alternative solution. Honestly, I read the title wrong and thought you meant this was a fix. I realize now what your intent was. My apologies.

As an aside, I've made some headway, I can get it to sync sometimes I deleted the contacts account and did a battery pull to reset the phone. I then added the contact account back and had my data. I then made a change on the phone and it synced. Made a change in Google and it synced to the phone (using Manual Sync in both cases). However, I had sketchy results on later tries, also had to close Gmail and reopen to see my changes from the phone.

We'll see, I've only had it for a day. I wholeheartedly believe in the next service release, Palm, Sprint and Google will have this all worked out. This phone is too important for Sprint and Palm to not address it.

[acterry]

No apologies needed man ... it's all good.

Are you saying that you're having troubles with my workaround? I didn't need to do any battery pulls ... though I was impatient when the contacts account didn't immediately disappear. It took a 2-3 minutes for the 1000+ contacts to be removed from my phone. I could see the contact count winding down though.

Let me know if you're having any troubles with the workaround.

[tialoc]

No, I was talking about the native sync support for Gmail. I don't want to do the workaround because I would rather it work as intended and have Palm address it.

Yes, When I deleted the Contacts Account it counted down as it deleted the contacts. The first time I did it I was crossing my fingers hoping that it wasn't syncing that to Google and deleting my data. But then I came back to reality

I'm really enjoying the phone however.