8 FAQ

Here are some Frequently Ask-able Questions, along with answers.

8.1 Can I use this to copy my contacts from one Google account to

another? Yes, that is possible.

8.2 Is there a way to not use my CardDAV password in clear text?

For now it is not possible. But please note that you are running ASynK on your own machine. The authors of ASynK, or any one other than you for that matter, cannot see your activity. That should provide some comfort.

Note that in the early days of ASynK, one had to use password in clear text to sync from/to Google Contacts. Google themselves deprecated this way of authentication, and now it is all oAuth-based. It is a little more cumbersome to get set up in the new way, but it is certainly more secure.

8.3 My Google password is not working, but I know it is right!

Circa late 2014 Google starting blocking access to applications accessing account data using plain text authentication as a conservative security policy. You can find more information about this on Google’s page here: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255 and see if this is what’s tripping you up.

8.4 Other Comparable Tools

8.4.1 What’s wrong with Google’s tools?

Google’s tools are not as versatile as ASynK. I started work on ASynK because I was unhappy with the state of sync solutions for Android and MS Outlook (more on this later). Subsequently I added BBDB support and the made the application flexible enough that I can sync my contacts between BBDB and MS Outlook directly. Google has no tools to do that, of course. Further, the platform is flexible enough to add support for any number of additional PIM data providers.

Fundamentally, Google does not have a coherent and integrated strategy for Personal Information Management (PIM). Contacts, Calendar, Notes and Tasks are unrelated products with big differences in their APIs. The Tasks program itself is of very limited functionality. This applies equally to Android as well as for the cloud products. So it is hardly surprising that they do not have a tightly integrated PIM sync solution for Android like Blackberry and Nokia’s sync software with MS Outlook, say.

Google does provide a few options for people who want to get data into their Google account from Outlook.

1. A two-way Contacts sync tool for customers of their ’Google Apps for Business users’. That is to say, it is not available for regular non-paying customers like you and me. I haven’t tried this even once.
2. A one-way migration Contacts migration tool from MS Outlook, which only works if you are saying goodbye to Outlook and moving home to Android. This is not practical for people who use Outlook at work, but who want to use their contacts on Android on their phone.

   Even if you’re willing to keep all your edits in Outlook, there are various other problems:

   • It is so slow it is impractical for frequent use - migrating 1000 contacts took more than 10 minutes. ASynK takes roughly a tenth of that time.
   • It is very inflexible: all contacts get dumped in your ’My Contacts’ mother group. If you would like to neatly isolate your Outlook contacts neatly into a separate group, no go.
   • Older versions of this tool had issues with extracting email addresses from Outlook entries - EX email addresses for those who care. Incidentally, this EX email address problem plagues a number of sync solutions, including an otherwise excellent product from TouchDown for Outlook PST.
3. A two-way Calendar sync tool that works quite well, and available for all users, include retail consumers.
4. And finally, their import from CSV. Let’s just say, if you’re happy with this option you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

8.4.2 What is wrong with tools from HTC and other vendors?

These tools generally sync with MS Outlook, but are not available easily for generic Android users. For e.g. owners of the pure Google phones such as Nexus S. Further these are closed source, and adding BBDB support is, well, not possible.

8.4.3 What is wrong with GoContactSync?

GoContactSync (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gocontactsync is a GPL-ed two way sync solution between MS Outlook and Google Contacts. It has favourable reviews on the general internet. The drawback is it is written in .NET, a language I do not know and have no desire to learn at this time. Python was versatile enough to work on Windows and Unix, and allowed me to extend to a third PIM data provider (BBDB). As noted earlier, ASynK is the only two way sync solution for BBDB today.

8.5 What’s Changed between v0.1 and v0.2?

It’s almost a total rewrite. Here are main changes:

1. v0.2.0 adds support for Emacs BBDB. At this time ASynK is the only available working program that does bidirectional sync of BBDB to any other PIM database.
2. v0.1 was designed only for MS Outlook and Google Contacts. As a result it was designed to run on Windows only, and there is a mandatory dependency on PyWin32.

   v0.2 works on Linux, Mac and Windows. Only if MS Outlook support is needed, a third party library called PyWin32 is needed.

3. v0.1 was distributed as a packaged Windows binary and the only user interface was a GUI built with WxPython (required the user to install an additional third party library)

   v0.2 UI is purely command line, even on Windows.

4. v0.2 introduces the concept of sync profiles and folder-folder sync, which is much more advanced than what we had earlier. v0.1 always did a sync between the default contacts folder in the default message store with a newly created folder called Gout on google.

This document was generated on November 10, 2017 using texi2html 5.0.