Using Sync in a Blink with Google Contact Groups
The latest version of the Sync in a Blink iPhone app supports Google Contact Groups. This is a wonderful feature addition, as Google adds all correspondents to its “Suggested Contacts” group which then sync down to the iPhone which probably isn’t desirable. I don’t really want all the mailing lists and support email addresses I correspond with to show up as contacts on my iPhone. By creating an “iPhone Contacts” group, I can avoid that problem.
Unfortunately, the way contact groups are supported on the iPhone and their interaction with Sync in a Blink is not entirely intuitive. After configuring Sync in a Blink to only sync the “iPhone Contacts” group, I found that newly created contacts on the iPhone were not syncing back to Google. I initially thought this may be a limitation of the iPhone, but it’s not. There is a way to make this work.
When I added a new contact, I tried editing the contact details to add it into the “iPhone Contacts” group, but unfortunately the iPhone contact editor doesn’t support editing groups. Hopefully some day it will, but today it doesn’t. The key is to create the new contact within the “iPhone Contacts” group.
When I clicked on “Contacts” from my iPhone home screen, it was defaulting to “All Contacts” but if I clicked back to “Groups” I could then select “iPhone Contacts” and add then add a new contact. That contact would be added into the “iPhone Contacts” group.
If you always remember to add new contacts into the correct Contact Group then you’re done. Happy syncing. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure this out until I already had added several contacts in the “All Contacts” group and no easy way to move them over to “iPhone Contacts”. There may be a way to change the Contact Group of an existing contact, but if there is I don’t know about it.
Instead I found a different workaround. It’s slightly clunky but better than not having my contacts sync. It uses the Merge Contacts feature of Sync in a Blink.
The first step is to create a contact within the “iPhone Contacts” group with the same name. This new contact doesn’t need to actually have any other contact details, just the name. Everything else will be merged from the existing contact with Sync in a Blink. When browsing “All Contacts” there will now be two people with the same name, one in “All Contacts” and one from “iPhone Contacts”.
In the above example you can see there are two copies of “Example2 Person”.
Now we need to use the Sync in a Blink Merge Contacts feature to sync the “All Contacts” version with the “iPhone Contacts” version.
Notice in the above screenshots I have selected the “iPhone Contacts” version of “Example2 Person” to sync. This is important! While I could have selected both from “All Contacts”, that will not preserve the fact that the new blank contact is in “iPhone Contacts”. Why? I don’t know, but it doesn’t. So be sure to select the new dummy contact from within your contact group!
Next we select the original “Example2 Person” contact to sync with.
Notice in the above screenshot that it shows the “iPhone Contacts” Contact Group selected. If it doesn’t show that option, a step was missed and this procedure isn’t working. Normally there would be phone numbers, email addresses, etc. In my case I don’t have that information for my example contact since it’s not important for showing the procedure. But when you merge your contacts you should actually see all the contact details. Make sure that the real data is checked so you don’t lose any information.
Once everything looks good in the Merge Fields screen, it’s time to complete the sync.
As the screen suggests, it would be a good idea to sync with Google Contacts at this point. In the sync summary screen you should see that your iPhone contact was added to Google.
While none of this is rocket science, it did have me banging my head against the wall slightly. So I hope this information will help others avoid my frustration!
It would be nice if a future version of the iPhone software and/or Sync in a Blink would make it easier to directly edit the Contact Group of an existing contact, so that creating a dummy contact and then syncing it would not be necessary.
I also wish there were an easy way to get a delta between the “All Contacts” group and my “iPhone Contacts” group so I could see exactly who is included in “All Contacts” and missing from “iPhone Contacts”. At the moment I have to do this manually, and as I have over 330 contacts in my phone it’s tedious and error prone. I still have about 6 more contacts in my “All Contacts” group than in my “iPhone Contacts” group. One of these days I’ll have time to track down the differences. But not today!