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Synchronization creates duplicate groups
On synchronizing with Gmail (only, no other synchronizations as of yet), I ended up with a lot of extra contact groups in Gmail. My "Work" category, for example, was duplicated probably about a dozen times with various people in multiple duplicate groups. I was able to consolidate them into one and delete the empty groups yesterday, but I noticed they were back today (though all but one were empty).
I don't seem to have any duplicate contacts themselves, just the groups.
I don't seem to have any duplicate contacts themselves, just the groups.
I’m disappointed in triplicate
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Hey Guys,
We got this thing fixed! It was caused by something new we have been doing over the last few months. On any update of a contact in Soocial we would send it pretty much immediately to Gmail.
Now if you create a new Group in lets say OSX, and add a few contacts to it, this would be synced to Soocial right away. Soocial would then send those individual contacts to Gmail. By sending it Soocial would query for the existence of that group. The answer would be "no" offcourse because it is a new group. But then we send the next update contact right away, and do the same query. The answer to the question if the group exists is "no" again bacause Gmail needs a bit of time to be aware of the the fact that we just created this group for the first updated contact. So basically we were to fast for Google's api.
We have changed the behavior where we will not update the contact right away if it has a group that needs to be created in Google.
On a next sync then those contacts will be updated. Offcourse you can manually request a sync on the www.soocial.com/connections page.
It would be really great if some of you could purposefully test this and let us know if there is anything unexpected still. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the hassle.
I’m happy we keep improving and are killing bugs like flies
The company says
this solves the problem
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Inappropriate?Hey Andrew,
Sorry this hasn't been hassle free for you.
We are having some issues with the Gmail sync right now. We gat wierd errors back. We are looking in to this right now. We hope to fix this soon.
Thanks for your feedback.
I’m sad the gmail sync is not working well.
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Inappropriate?Cause: I tihnk there seem to be no support for multiple categories/tags/groups:
It seems to happen when a contact is assigned to multiple categories in Outlook. When Outlook contacts are synced to Soocial, and then pushed to Google, duplicate groups are created in Google to accommodate it.
For example if John is categorized as "Business" , "Lawyer", and "Vancouver", and George is "Business", "Florist", and "Vancouver". Then There will be 2 Business Groups, one containing John only, one containing George only. Similarly, 2 Vancouver Groups, and 1 Lawyer Group, and 1 Florist Group. If you add another contact that is only categorized as "Lawyer", it will be added to the pre-existing Lawyer group in Google.
I'm an IT admin, and have 20 People on Soocial. If this is fixed, were will have absolutely no problems left with Soocial.
Thanks for the hard work.
I’m disapointed and hopeful.
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Inappropriate?Mohsen, that would completely make sense to me. Is that how it happened for your contacts?1 Comment Add a comment
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I have a lot of contacts in multiple groups; this could certainly be the case for my contacts. -
Inappropriate?This problem is NOT solved!
I deleted all groups in gmail one week ago and now i have aganin more than 1800 (!) groups, most of them with zero members. I also looked up my contacts in Outlook not to have them in more than one group - so it is.
Please look at this problem again - thanks!
I’m frustrated
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Levitron,
ouch, that's ugly. Can't find your username would you mind sending a short message to support (at soocial dot com) with a reference to this post? -
I'll have to dig in to this. It is not behavior that we see much. Thanks for your mail I will get back to you.
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Bart, would you want details from me? Mine are under control and I'm reluctant to try Soocial again until I know this is resolved, but I'd be willing to test anything.
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Inappropriate?For what it's worth, I'm an Apps user (in case the specific version of Gmail in use makes a difference) and would be willing to supply anyone with a test account at my domain to troubleshoot the issue.2 Comments Add a comment
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Thanks Andrew. We do use Apps ourselves for Soocial.com do you use groups in Outlook? Is that where they are coming from?I have looked in to Outlook but wasn't able to find how to make them there.
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In general, I synchronize my contacts between Outlook, my BlackBerry, and Gmail. I have been using Oggsync for the Outlook <--> Gmail synchronization. So I'm not sure if I created the categories/groups in Outlook or Gmail, but they existed on both.
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Inappropriate?Hi Bart!
You can categorize your contacts in Outlook. On version 2003 just open a contact and write the category in the field on the right bottom corner, in version 2007 you have to select the category in the field options (coloured squares). This creates the groups in gmail. -
Inappropriate?I had this problem and traced it to having some contacts in Outlook 2007 assigned to more then one group. When I eliminated the multiple assignments I stopped having the problem in Gmail via Soocial. Hope this helps in finding the problem.
You assign groups in Outlook 2007 using the Categorize button under the Contacts tab when editing a contact card as the post above pointed out -
Inappropriate?Guys, thanks for the input! I am trying to replicate the problem. Levitron, I haven't forgotten. Pete1 that's great input. I'll try that.
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Inappropriate?Hey Guys,
I was able to reproduce this problem somewhat. pete1 is right, it has to do with multiple categories, but also that the current outlook client does not support categories. It does sent the categories to Soocial but tells the sync server that it doesn't support them. This causes strange behavior of which this is a result. So, we will only be able to fix this with a new outlook client.
We are working really hard on it. But no ETA.
I’m happy we know what is going on.
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If its an Outlook issue and I have no doubt it is :), maybe you can ignore categories all together and not forward them to Gmail? Something tells me this behavior will not change in Outlook 2007 anytime soon if ever....
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It is not Outlook, but our outlook client that is causing this.
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Inappropriate?I am having a similar trouble. I have about 1500 outlook contacts. Each contact may be assigned to up to 5 categories. Now in my gmail contacts I have over 8000 category entries each one is empty. This has ground my gmail contacts to a stand still. It takes over 40 sec. to delete one empty category (yes I have highspeed) deleting multiple categories returns with a gmail error after much time has passed. I can delete all the contacts in my gmail, but the categories stay put. Any suggestions would be great.
Alan3 Comments Add a comment
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Sorry about that Alan, You probably would have more luck asking in a Gmail forum. Seems like our sync was able to cause real trouble in Gmail. :-(
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-... -
"Any suggestions would be great."
Don't use it. I've all but given up on Soocial because of this (Gmail is my primary place for contacts and the sync client for Outlook, my secondary one, has problems of its own.) -
I do have to agree with Andrew for now Alan. The current Alpha version of the Outlook sync does cause this. If you use multiple groups for your contacts in outlook, it will cause multiplication of empty groups in Gmail.
This should be fixed in the next version that should come out soon! -
Inappropriate?I had a couple thousand empty groups too... I finally wrote a little .NET application to delete them all... email me at "gmailgroupproblem(at)scrappydog.com" if you would like help deleting yours...
1 person says
this solves the problem
4 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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That's cool Scrappydog thanks for sharing.
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Thank you Scrappydog!
I sent you some email. -
Can you send me this app? Plz!!! alexei.roz (at) gmail.com
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scrappydog,
Can I have one too? Can I redistribute it if nescesary? bart at .soocial dot com -
Inappropriate?Here is the link to my tool (Windows only): http://scrappydog.com/GoogleGroupClea...
Note: This will delete ALL your gmail groups8 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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Unfortunately the app doesn't able to remove groups from my Gmail contacts.
After entering email address and password I see list of deleted groups.
But when I check contacts through browser I see that all empty groups still there. -
With a large number of groups I think it takes a while for the results to show up in the Gmail client. Wait 15 minutes and check again with a fresh browser session...
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Thanks Scrappydog, this worked flawlessly. Removed over 10,000 empty groups in less than an hour.
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Great tool Scrappydog!
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This comment was removed on 01/21/09.
see the change log -
Excuse me! I was stupid.
The problem was that I had much more then 1000 groups in the contacts.
After I have ran the app many times (more then 10) all my groups was completely deleted.
Thank you again.
Now I feel much happier. -
Thanks ScrappyDog this is a great help - - now if only we could get blackberry syncing my world would be complete :)
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I got an "App is improperly formatted error." when trying to install. ????
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Inappropriate?What a life saver. I had to run it over and over and it finally cleared them all out. I think I may be able to keep using gmail now.
Thanks Scrappy!
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Inappropriate?Hey everybody,
The new Outlook client addresses this issue. Also we have changed our syncing process to look for duplicate groups that Soocial created and remove them. Please let us know if it it solved for you now.
I’m happy we tackled the duplicate groups.
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Inappropriate?Sorry: The problem with duplicate contract groups being created in Gmail when synching from Outlook is still NOT fixed. I tried setting up Soocial again (I'm a glutton for Beta testing punishment I guess)...
And it immediately started creating duplicate groups in Gmail again...
Also my Outlook contacts magically grew from 2,000 to 12,000 overnight... NOT a good thing... I'm unistalling everything again... :-)
I’m amused
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Inappropriate?Not fixed...
I am on a mac and I use Soocial to sync my Adress book with Gmail (apps) contacts. My contacts are assigned to multiple categories, and gmail creates lots of dups. What can I do ?
Now that leopard syncs with Gmail, I went back to Soocial only to have groups and images syncs : there are problems with groups and images don't sync. Thus, I think I will wait for a fix to use Soocial...
I’m frustrated
1 Comment Add a comment
This solves the problem
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Check out the response about "Googaby" here. Looks like that helped a Mac user.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p... -
Inappropriate?I'm still getting the problem too with the latest outlook client. Lots of duplicate groups ..
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Still multiple groups for me too. Running v.0.9.86. Set to update software daily. Do I need to uninstall Outloook client and reinstall?
Bart, where art thou? Hesitant to recommend it till this is fixed.
- Doug
I’m sweating in my pits
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Inappropriate?Multiple Gmail groups does not seem to be caused by the Outlook client. One of our guys is spending some time on it today. Good chance it will be fixed this week.
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Inappropriate?FYI, I seem to have a workaround. I deleted all my contacts/groups in gmail. manually created my categories and ran a new sync. Everything seemed to go into the right groups without duplicating the groups.
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Inappropriate?Hey Guys,
We got this thing fixed! It was caused by something new we have been doing over the last few months. On any update of a contact in Soocial we would send it pretty much immediately to Gmail.
Now if you create a new Group in lets say OSX, and add a few contacts to it, this would be synced to Soocial right away. Soocial would then send those individual contacts to Gmail. By sending it Soocial would query for the existence of that group. The answer would be "no" offcourse because it is a new group. But then we send the next update contact right away, and do the same query. The answer to the question if the group exists is "no" again bacause Gmail needs a bit of time to be aware of the the fact that we just created this group for the first updated contact. So basically we were to fast for Google's api.
We have changed the behavior where we will not update the contact right away if it has a group that needs to be created in Google.
On a next sync then those contacts will be updated. Offcourse you can manually request a sync on the www.soocial.com/connections page.
It would be really great if some of you could purposefully test this and let us know if there is anything unexpected still. Thanks for your patience and sorry for the hassle.
I’m happy we keep improving and are killing bugs like flies
The company says
this solves the problem
1 Comment Add a comment
This solves the problem
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Sounds like the solution though I'll have to try it. I expect this solution will *not* however eliminate the multiple groups that already exist in Gmail? We will need to delete our Gmail contacts first then resync? Or will that eliminate the contacts in Outlook too? Now I'm nervous.
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Inappropriate?If there are duplicate groups we do grab all contacts in those groups and put them in one group and delete the duplicate groups. So should not be a problem there right?3 Comments Add a comment
This solves the problem
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It doesn't seem to have worked for me .. I've done a manual Gmail Sync and still have lots of duplicate groups, some with contacts in, some empty.
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Just doesn't work that way for me. I have TONS of empty groups and duplicate groups with various numbers of contacts in them.
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Logic Labs & DougL could you email us your usernames to support@soocial.com so that we can take a look?
Thanks! -
Inappropriate?Could you please email us your username to support@soocial.com so that I can take a look at your account?
Thanks,
EMPLOYEE
EMPLOYEE
