Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

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periodic
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Joined: October 13th, 2006, 10:13 pm

Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

I have sync'd gmail contacts to thunderbird using gContactSync for ages. It stopped working for me about a month ago, and have not been able to raise any help from the developer. There is some chance that the failure has to do with whatever changes came with tbird 60. The gContactSync project seems very quiet. Google Contacts is normally mentioned as an alternate sync add on but from what I've read that project has been down and out for years.

Lots of people use gmail and thunderbird; what are you using? Without sync'd contacts thunderbird seems far less viable.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by tanstaafl »

See https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/th ... /cardbook/ . You just need a email provider that supports CardDAV.
Google Contacts, GMail, Yahoo, Fastmail, AOL... do.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

Thanks for that tip. I've checked out cardbook a bit. I see that I can create a remote addressbook that gets the emails I have in gmail, great. But due to a bug in gmail (at least per forum posts) it will not sync gmail labels which are critical for me. Bummer...I wish tbird had this capability integrated, or as stable as lightning is.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

Is there anything new on the horizon for sync of gmail contacts? gcontactsync still fails for me and the developer is not responding to requests for help.

Shouldn't contact sync with gmail be a front and center priority for thunderbird? We have lightning integrated now, but for many of poeple contact sync must be even more directly critical to the functionality of an email client.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by tanstaafl »

"Shouldn't contact sync with gmail be a front and center priority for thunderbird? "

Your preferred solution is not the only way. You rejected CardBook because it doesn't sync gmail labels. Explicit support for gmail labels is being added to Thunderbird later this year, so its not clear to me what you really meant. Labels are mapped to remote folders by the IMAP server.

Provider for CalDAV & CardDAV is an enhancement for the TbSync add-on that adds CardDAV and CalDAV support. According to a mailing list post on August 3 that author plans to add google support for it soon. An earlier post stated "Long story short: I would like to take over the gdata provider, remove it from the thunderbird source and turn it into a google provider AddOn for TbSync, merged with gContactSync to provide simple setup for google contacts, tasks and events using the google API.

As Magnus knows, Ryan asked me about a year ago to add TbSync to Thunderbird core as a new central place to manage cloud accounts and I have been working on that ever since. I have now a clean code base and the provider API added by TbSync looks very good now as well. That provider API allows other AddOns to hook into TbSync and add sync capabilities. Currently there are Exchange Active Sync and CalDav/CardDAV. The second one is actually only adding CardDAV support and delegates caldav sync to lightning, but it is doing resource discovery (so users do not have to add the individual urls, but only need the base server address).

The next logical step would be to add a google provider. I hope to get the author of gContactSync onboard, but I haven't asked yet.
"
JYLD
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by JYLD »

As far as I know gContactSync is working fine for me to synchronize google contacts with my TB address books. I'm using TB 60.8.0 and gContactSync 2.1.13.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

JYLD those are the versions I have and it's been unable to sync since Aprl. Josh the dev tried to help but nothing worked and I've not heard from him in months after several requests.

To tanstaafl, yes my preferences are simply my own. But gmail is widely used and not sync'ing the contacts and labels seems like a huge gap. If Thunderbird will soon sync labels that's good of course, and I didn't know about it. The rest of the quoted text that you provided sounds encouraging. I will keep an eye on those developments...I don't really understand the components that are described but they do sound like they'd be in the right zone. Thank you for your comments.
JYLD
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by JYLD »

I checked it and gContactSync is definitely working BOTH ways for me. Seems like it is something in your setup that is the problem. I have no idea what though. You need to try a fresh install of TB and then add gContactSync as the only addon/extension to see if it works then. How do you connect to GMail, are you using two step verification or not. I'm not. Are you using Oauth2 or not. I am.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

I'm not using OAuth2, not using two step verification. I have uninstalled and reinstalled gcontactsync. I didn't try a fresh install of tbird. gcontactsync started throwing errors and reporting perilous sounding numbers of records to be sync'd, which I canceled out of, and now, for months, it finds nothing to sync at all.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by tanstaafl »

Did you check that cookies are still enabled for google.com using tools -> options ->privacy? Perhaps something changed that setting.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

Cookies from google are accepted.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

Back to one of my original comments...I don't get why the thunderbird main developers don't make it a top priority to sycn contacts with gmail and whatever else is out there. tanstaafl suggested that there is hope that another add on (or a series of them, I can't tell) might eventually support sync of gmail contacts. If that works, eventually, that's better than nothing, for as long as it does work. It could end up like gcontactsync which worked for years in my case and then stopped, and the dev has no time to follow up on it. How can contact sync be less important than event sync? Contacts are far more primary than events for an email client.

I have donated to thunderbird, I do support the effort and understand that they have to priorize. But this sure seems like primary feature that ought to be in thunderbird, and supported as part of thunderbird.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by tanstaafl »

See http://www.pirules.org/blog/?p=490

Version 68 of Thunderbird is supposed to be released soon (they are almost ready for pre-release testing). Version 68 will break many unmodified legacy add-ons. My impression is that a lot of the maintenance work for add-ons is focused on getting them ready for version 68, where in many cases you need to write a WebExtension based replacement for the legacy add-on.

I suggest you try gContactSync again when version 68 is released. The add-on author stated "The latest Thunderbird 68 nightly worked pretty well with version 3.1.6 (uploaded for review on June 1st, 2019), but I haven’t tested it exhaustively, and there is no guarantee something won’t break before Thunderbird 68 is fully released. Please write up bugs on the GitHub page as you find them. " You could use the CardBook or the SoGo Connector add-ons in the interim.
JYLD
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by JYLD »

gContactSync works. Based on what you wrote above you corrupted something in your setup. It was suggested that you create a fresh install of TB and then install gContactSync as your first and only addon and see if it works for you. You apparently have not tried that. People are trying to help you, but you don't seem to want to try and help yourself.
periodic
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Re: Google Contact and gContactSync don't work so...?

Post by periodic »

JYLD, yes that must be it, I apparently don't want to help myself, thank you.
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