Spanning Sync’s new trick

I’ve written before about what a great piece of software I think Spanning Sync is. They recently upgraded their code base to version 2.0 (which is free for all Spanning Sync owners/subscribers) and gave it a new trick.

Spanning Sync 2.0 Main Screen

Spanning Sync now uses the Google Contacts API to sync your Mac Address Book contacts with the Gmail Contacts section. This not only allows you to back up your contacts to Google, but provides easy access to those vital contacts from Gmail when you are on the go.

Now making this transition wasn’t as easy as the Calendar was, mostly because of the way Gmail deals with contacts, and some base restrictions they have. You aren’t permitted to have two contacts with matching e-mail addresses. Names? No problem. But e-mail addresses are a fatal error. Now I never really used the Google Contacts interface for much before, except for Google Talk. However, as I soon found out, Gmail adds a “suggested contact” for everyone you e-mail from Gmail who isn’t already in your address book. These suggested contacts cause Spanning Sync to spit some Google error goodness at your if you don’t wipe them out first. You will also quickly find your Gtalk contact list a mess too when you try to sync and Spanning Sync tries to figure out which direction to overwrite each contact.

Now this is a great feature, but you should probably take the following steps before starting contact syncing with Spanning Sync:

1. Stop right now, and back up your contacts. Go. Do it. File>Export>Address Book Archive. If I didn’t do this when I first started playing around with the software, I’d be crying in my soup at all my screwed up contacts. Before going any further, do this.
2. In your Spanning Sync preferences, switch your sync frequency to Manually. This allows you to safely make all your settings changes without Spanning Sync getting trigger happy. Once you’ve made it past your first sync, it’s safe to set this back to the frequency that works for you.
3. Remove all your “suggested contacts” and other duplicate entries between your Mac Address Book and Google Contacts, with the exception of your Google Talk contact entries
4. For your Google Talk contacts, do the opposite. Manually move the information over from your Mac Address Book to Google Contacts, and then wipe the entry out of your Mac Address Book. This ensures the special contact flags that exist on the Google side of things to denote a “Google Talk capable” contact are retained.
5. If you really want to keep things segregated during that initial sync, go into your Mac Address Book and create two groups: a “Mac Contacts” group, and a “Gmail Contacts” group. Move all your Mac Address Book contacts into the Mac Contacts group, and set the Gmail Contacts group as the destination group in your Spanning Sync preferences. This will allow you to see what is going in what direction. Once you make it through that first sync, it’s easiest to set it back to All Contacts, move the contacts out of those groups, and remove the groups.
   

   Contact Groups screen in SS 2.0

6. Before hitting that sync button for the first time, you may wish to go back to the Advanced tab in the Spanning Sync preferences and hit Open Log Window. This will let you watch what the software is doing in real time, as well as show you any error messages.
7. Okay, when you think you’re ready, hold your breath, maybe take ONE MORE backup and hide it away on a USB key, then hit the Sync button. If all goes according to plan, you will shortly have all your contacts in two places.

It’s really cool to have all your vital information available at your fingertips, where ever you are. Hopefully with a little luck, some good backups, and some of my tips here, you’ll be able to fix up your mess of contacts, as I did mine. If you are a Mac user, have contact (or calendar) information, and think it would be nice to have that information while on the go, look no farther than Spanning Sync. It’s a very well written piece of software, and is at a fair price (which is pretty much the polar opposite of some other Mac software *cough*Office2008*cough*). And you can *still* get $5 off on Spanning Sync by clicking this link: http://spanningsync.com/?r=SAUHNN.