I've come to realize that Gmail just isn't robust enough to be a
dependable repository for calendar and contacts, at least for me. My
realization of this comes after my project to divide up my work and
personal contacts and calendar. I have always kept one calendar and one
set of contacts, and it's always been on my work computer. With privacy
the way it is now, I figured it was time to split the two.
My troubles began even before this project. What I wanted was to
have my work Outlook calendar AND contacts sync to Gmail as well as my
phone. Well, the phone part is easy since the Nokia PC Suite does just
that and works well. Google has a calendar sync app, but not anything
for contacts. Moreover, I really didn't want to install any syncing app
on my work PC anyways.
The solution that I decided on was to sync work to N95 and then sync
N95 to Gmail using GooSync. I popped for the lifetime plan for about
$80US since you have to do that to sync contacts.Well, there were
always issues and I often had to do a “slow sync” which is basically
like starting over. Contacts was the most problematic and often the
Gmail entry would not update for changes. I think a lot of the problems
are due to the fact that Gmail doesn't support identical contact
fields. The most glaring example of this is that the street, city and
zip are all one field the Gmail, but separate elsewhere. (Incidentally,
I did try Google Calendar sync and found it terrible. Some events would
sync and some wouldn't.)
Actually having my data in three places (work Outlook, N95 and
Gmail) and expecting everything to be in sync is prolly asking too
much. Apparently.
OK, so back to my bifurcation project.
I decided that Outlook running on my home PC was going to be my
primary repository. The Bible. I would sync it with my N95 so I'd have
a portable copy. Gmail was out of the process due to its unreliability
and it would just add an unneeded additional headache.
My N95 had full versions of contacts and calendar, so I sync that
with home Outlook. Contacts seem to lose some info, so I deleted all
contacts on home Outlook and imported a delimited text file of all
Outlook contacts from work. Then deleted all of the non-work contacts
from my work Outlook. I also deleted all non-work events and
appointments from my work Outlook.
At this point, I've got work with only work calendar and contacts.
Home has all contacts and calendar. Now, I set my work PC Suite sync to
a one-way (Outlook to phone) for calendar only. So if I add something
to my work calendar, it will show up on my phone. When I sync my phone
with home Outlook, the events will show up there.
I guess I could do a similar thing with contacts, but I've decided
that I'll limit changes to doing them on my phone or at home on
Outlook.