Knowledgebase

Seeing duplicate events on your Calander, or WORSE duplicated contacts, it's your BlackBerry Fault!

How do I fix it !?

Follow the below steps to get the perfect wireless contact sync on Blackberry

1. The first thing to do is to setup Gmail as the primary store for Address Book. If you are using Outlook or any other contact store, you need to export the contacts to  CSV and import them in Gmail
2. Gmail also has this nice de-duplicator feature which can be used to eliminate all the duplicate contacts in the address book.
3. While setting up the Gmail account on Blackberry, select the “Sync Contacts” option
   
4. It will take a few minutes, before you start seeing all the Gmail contacts on your Blackberry Address book.
5. However there is a bug because of which, sync might cause duplicate contacts only on the Blackberry Address book (not on Gmail). To avoid this go to Address Book -> Options -> General Options and set "Allow Duplicate Names" to "No"
   
6. All contact changes (add/update/delete)  done either on device or on Gmail are synced almost immediately.

Some of the frequently asked questions  on how to get the contact sync up and going:

What If I have the contacts only on the SIM?

1. Import the contacts from SIM to Blackberry Address book. If a contact had multiple phone numbers, this will create multiple contacts on BB Address book.
2. Setup Gmail sync (using the above 6 steps)
3. Use Gmail de-duplicator to fix all the duplicate contacts which got created during SIM import
4. Changes done on Gmail should automatically sync back to the device

What If I have already synced/imported the contacts via Blackberry Desktop Manager

1. One way of handling this is to import the contacts into Gmail first, use the Gmail de-duplicator feature and then setup the Gmail contact sync feature.
2. Alternatively, you can just go ahead and setup the Gmail sync; If there are duplicates, Gmail should help in merging the duplicate contacts.

Note: Wireless Synchronization can be turned ON or OFF even via the Blackberry Address book options.

ADDITIONAL HELP

"HELP!
I set up my blackberry to sync with my gmail account last week but now my contact lists on my gmail account and blackberry are multiplying exponentially! As I try to delete contacts, more are added. I cannot even delete them off my blackberry. It is set to not allow duplicates.
signed,
Desperate"

ANSWER

The best way to sync is to start with a empty address book on the device (blackberry) and have all the contacts on Gmail.

You seem to have synced on your existing contacts in Blackberry. I would suggest the following

Go to Contacts -> Options and type Alt+ RSET ; this is to reset the contact sync; this should fix the issue

If not,
1. setup your gmail address book (add all the missing contacts , run de-duplicator etc)
2. Use Desktop Manager to clear the Address book on the device and sync again

CALENDAR

Calendar Options > type 'rset'

You will get a pop-up message, about resetting calendar. Says 'Yes'. Your black Berry will now pull down your information form the mail server.