gmail & goosync problems

Apparently google puts e-mail IDs entered on an ad hoc basis into the contacts in a google defined group that cannot be deleted; it is called Suggested Contacts.  So far the only solution I have found to prevent those "contacts" from being added to my Palm Treo 700P is to delete them in google prior to running Goosync.  I sent a message to a fake e-mail ID (blah@jgfjgf.com) and sure enough it turned up in Suggested Contacts.  Argh!  I am hoping that the second sync will delete the Suggested Contacts from my Palm Treo.

There are more serious problems.

It seems that google's gmail does not like contacts with only first name or only last name, at least not when imported.  That may have caused some of the mess up.  Google does not have a field for web site.  What?  Did google just forget?  No birthday either.  You cannot search (and FIND) on any contact values as can be done in Yahoo.  For instance when trying to find where one of the floating phone numbers belonged I tried to search google contacts on the phone number.  Nothing found.  That works in Yahoo.  After getting the contact in Yahoo I then had enough info to find it in google.   Adult supervision seems to be lacking at google.  I am remembering why I stuck with Yahoo e-mail for so long.  It worked.

I understand that neither google nor goosync handles things like multiple fields called the same thing, such as two home phone numbers for one contact.  The duplications that I have seen do not contain such redundancies.

Goosync duplicated some businesses that had nothing in either first or last name.  Why?  Here is a really simple one that was duped:

CallWave

+1 (866) 470-1989  other

Categories: Business

Goosync couldn't handle that?  Three fields?  Come on!

I am manually going through my contacts in my Palm Treo 700P.  When done I will do another goosync and see if some equilibrium has been established.  I really want this to work but goosync has to make more of an effort.  Besides I need to clean up my Treo.  Backing up google does nothing to restore the Treo contacts.

OK, about 90 minutes later ... I finished plowing through my Treo contacts removing duplicates.  Time for the second goosync!

It completed much more quickly.

The fake e-mail ID (blah@jgfjgf.com) that I forced into google as one of the Suggested Contacts wound up in my Palm Treo as expected.

Half of a couple of other contacts got into my Palm Treo.  I am not going to try to figure that out.

I had noticed that a couple of names had been switched, maybe when I imported data into google.  I switched first and last name in the Palm Treo but that switch did not get done in google after the goosync.  What the heck?  I could understand if they got duplicated but NO change was made!

It appears that the ALL of the records that I deleted in the Palm Treo because duplicates had been generated during the first goosync had BOTH records deleted from the Palm Treo as a result of the goosync.  Fortunately, the single record remains in google.  Included in this carnage is the lone example that I had displayed above: CallWave.  It is gone from the Treo but it is in google contacts.  I have no idea how I can get those records back into my the Palm Treo.