Synchronize Contacts Between Thunderbird And Gmail

Posted by Martin in Email  Tags: , , , ,

4

Aug



If you use both the email client Mozilla Thunderbird and Google Mail (Gmail) you might need a way to keep both address books in sync so that they can be accessed from both software programs. It’s unfortunately not that easy to synchronize the address books with the default options at hand.

The Thunderbird add-on gContactSync tries to make it easier by providing an uncomplicated way to synchronize the contact data. The user has to enter his gmail login details into Thunderbird after installing the add-on and make some configuration changes, for example the interval of the synchronization.

Thunderbird unfortunately saves contact information different than Gmail does which means that manual adjustments are required in Gmail to take this into account. By default, each informational piece about the address, like street and zip code are sorted into different lines in Thunderbird. This means that users would have to change those information in Gmail to fit the layout in Thunderbird.

That’s a bit problematic especially if a lot contacts with address information have been added to Gmail. The process is explained in this flash tutorial. Once that has been done the Google contacts can be imported into Thunderbird and the Thunderbird contacts can be synced with Google Mail by dropping them in the new address book that gets created in the process.


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12 Users Commented In This Post

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caschy says:

Hi Martin,

Zindus is a good add-on too ;)

David Bradley says:

I’ve written about this myself, but this looks like I much better solution than my own. I’ll have to update my post. thanks,

Martin says:

Caschy Zindus looks pretty nice especially because it seems to sync everything automatically without having to manually change the Gmail contacts.

Olivier says:

I have been using Zindus for a couple months now, and I am completely satisfied.
The only hassle is during the first sync. Zindus will not sync unless your Thunderbird contacts are unique in terms of email address.

Gavin says:

I’m also a zindus fan—and yes, the only problem seems to come from duplicates between the two systems. Once you’re past that initial stage? You’re set.

Neowster says:

Zindus too. Working great for me once gotten over the initial sync. If your thunderbird is a fresh install, then there won’t be any issue.

Sincroniza Thunderbird y Gmail | Incubaweb says:

[...] Sitio oficial | gContactSync Vía | gHacks [...]

gContactSync, sincroniza tus contactos de Thunderbird y Gmail says:

[...] Via gHacks [...]

Life Clerks » gContactSync Synchronizes Gmail and Thunderbird Contacts [Featured Thunderbird Extension] says:

[...] All platforms with Thunderbird: The gContactSync add-on synchronizes your contacts between Gmail and Thunderbird’s address book. While gContactSync syncs email addresses without a hitch, it is a little fussier about the formatting of the street address fields. If you’re a Thunderbird power user with a large set of Gmail contacts to import and synchronize, it’s definitely worth the inconvenience of tweaking your Gmail contacts. Fortunately there’s a video walk-through available to guide you through the needed tweaks, when you go to the download page at mozdev.org, a link to the flash tutorial is on the right hand side of the screen. gContactSync is a free download and works with Thunderbird. gContactSync [via gHacks] [...]

Josh says:

Hello all,

This is the author of gContactSync. The extension is still in the testing stage, so if you have any feedback or find bugs, please let me know joshgeenen gmail com. An improved test release that fixes a few bugs and supports synchronizing mail lists with groups is coming very soon.

Josh

Synchronizing Addresses - Your Thoughts « Pi’s Blog says:

[...] about the extension even though it is still in the testing stage in both English (Lifehacker, ghacks.net, etc.) and Spanish, which, fortunately, I can read (Incubaweb, VisualBeta.es).  After reading the [...]

Josh says:

This is Josh again. Based on the feedback from the review here and others based on it, there is a newer release (beta) that does not require any extra work to sync postal addresses and syncs groups with mail lists. If you already reformatted addresses those will work, too. It directly synchronizes with the postal addresses in Gmail.
http://pirules.net/gcontactsync/tutorial/index.html

And Martin, you did get the ball rolling, thanks. ;)

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