Synchronize Outlook with Gmail contacts so that from Gmail contacts will synchronize with your Android Phone or iPhone contacts.
Finding a way to synchronize Outlook with Gmail? So far I have not found any viable method to sync the contact data. As of current there is no direct way to synchronize my Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Android phone with Microsoft Outlook. So the only solution was to find way to synchronize Outlook with Gmail which from there you will sync between Gmail and Xperia X10. Same goes with synchronizing Outlook with iPhone contacts as well.
I found two methods; unfortunately it didn’t really work for me so hopefully you could get it to work. Both methods use third party open source software to synchronize Outlook with your Gmail account. Since an Android phone is basically a Google phone, there is a tight integration of the contacts between the Gmail account and the Android phone contacts. So once your Outlook contacts syncs with Gmail contacts, the synchronisation between Gmail and your Android phone will be complete.
GContactSynch or Google Contacts Outlook Synchronizer
Version: gcontactsync-setup-0.9.1.0.exe
File size: 377MB
URL: http://code.google.com/p/gcontactsynch/downloads/detail?name=gcontactsync-setup-0.9.1.0.exe&can=2&q=
This is a simple Outlook / Gmail Sync software uploaded to the Google code repository in July 2009. It works to a certain extend but with caveats. There has been no update since that uploaded date.
This gcontactsync is able to connect to your Gmail account without any problem and upload / download your contacts between your Gmail account and Microsoft Outlook.
However it has a serious flaw in that it doesn’t check for duplicates. Which means you are likely to get double contacts in both your Microsoft Outlook contacts as well as your Gmail account. And on further long term usage it will double up all your contacts. So this is not a viable solution for long term synchronization.
You can use it to transfer your contact data either way though there is still a risk of duplicates should the connection reset, it will start all over again which would mean duplicating your contacts again.
Go Contact Sync
File: GOContactSyncSetup.msi
Size: 1.1MB
URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gocontactsync/
So I gave this other version GoContactSyncSetup a try. The file is bigger than previous. This was rather more polished than the previous software, unfortunately try as I might, it wouldn’t synchronize and all get was some error message. Although many users said they managed to sync without any issue.
So…
Go Contact Sync Mod Version 2
File: GOContactSyncSetup_v2.1.1.msi
Size: 1.7MB
URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/googlesyncmod/
The original author has not updated the GoContactSync so another helpful programmer has taken over the project and updated the software code for better functionality.
Again unfortunately for me, I got the same errors as per the earlier version. I wonder what went wrong. But other users reported they were able to synchronize their outlook with their Gmail account and there also those who are in the same boat as me.
Hmm… I guess I just have live without any proper sync between Outlook and Gmail for now.
Transfer Outlook Contacts to Gmail Contacts using Export/Import
In case you want to transfer email from Outlook to Gmail you could do so by exporting your Outlook contacts to a CSV file and use the Gmail contact import to bring in the contacts. You may want to modify your mapping details as I noticed tel / fax tend to map to others, and for iPhone users it would mean the telephone numbers won’t show up in their handphone though for Android phone users has no problem seeing the contact numbers. By the way, you will need some patience if you have 500+ contacts as it takes awhile for your Android Phone or iPhone to update and synchronize the contact details.
Related post:
Outlook Live Hotmail vs Gmail (vs Yahoo Mail) which one is better to use?
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