Gmail google cal Spanning Sync MobileMe Contact Address Book = What a mess

Hi,
I used to have my life on an exchange server, I then switched to use gmail and google calendar but kept my contacts in Mac addressbook (which I imported from outlook).
Now the only clean way I found to sync Google calendar with my iphone is by installing Spanning Sync --> iCal --> MobileMe --> iphone.
I don't use iCal, I don't use mobile me. Just google calendar and iphone.
It all seemed to be peachy but I got greedy and wanted to consolidate my contacts across all of these.
What a mess!
I now have over two thousand contacts, hundreds of duplicates, hundreds of empty cards, dozens of names without any information whatsoever.
The "find duplicates" and merge functions on address book are a joke and even so, spanning sync seems to keep adding them back on..
What's going on!?
Anyone else have this problem?
How are you solving it?
Or do you have an altogether different system for consolidating google calendar , contacts and iphone!
HEEELP
Thanks

Do you mean each Contact has double-entries in the All group? Or do you mean the contacts appear in multiple Smart Groups as well as the All group?
You can restore a previously backed-up Address Book by using the built-in "*Revert to Address Book backup...*" function on the file menu.
Before you start doing anything though I would suggest backup your current messed-up Contacts using the same backup function.
You can also try exporting the All group as a vCard, deleting all your Contacts and smart groups, re-import the vCard and start over. It should notify you on import of duplicates.

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I have a new 2nd gen Touch 8g. I am trying to sync to my MacBook Pro. Would like to sync all my contacts and calendar info from my old Palm, but that is not my question today. I am unable to sync my Address Book and iCal information to Contacts and Calendar on the Touch. Specifics:
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- iTunes is 8.1, recently updated
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I can "sync" using iTunes. It backs up the Touch. It syncs the music. It doesn't sync the Address Book or Contacts properly.
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- Added 1 contact in Contacts on Touch and 1 event in Calendar on Touch. Synced. Each still had 1 contact, 1 event, but not the same ones.
- Set iTunes to replace the information on the iPod (one time). The sync completed, and erased the contact and calendar event on the Touch, and put the 1 iCal event onto the Touch (yea!) but not the contact from Address Book (boo!).
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Other details:
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- I don't use MobileMe (or really know what it is yet)
- I did use iSync to try to sync all my Palm info (not successfully), but stopped trying and reset the sync history, just in case.
- I don't use USB hubs, and I do the sync with just the Touch attached via the cable it came with directly into the MacBook Pro.
- I've read hundreds of posts here and elsewhere. I've restarted programs multiple times. I've updated software. I've tried following the advice of all the posts I could, even if they weren't precisely what I was experiencing.
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I managed to get the sync to work after much shutting down and restarting, of programs and the computer. I cleared the iSync history just in case. I closed programs, etc. Eventually, it just worked and has continued to do so ever since. It is not slow, but rather quick.
All is well.
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See here https://discussions.apple.com/message/17971094#17971094
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Unfortunately no, not at all. I've tried these boards which were obviously fruitless on this question. I've tried the Genius Bar. And I've tried other technical resources. I do not believe it's possible at this point.
"Little stuff" like this.... it's seemingly relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things, but can be real productivity killers when I have to go back and forth between Apple's Contacts software and the actual Google Apps/Gmail web UI. It's these little things that create quirks between Google Apps and Mac OS that almost make me want to return to Exchange. It's much more expensive and other than Outlook and Calendar/Mail/Contacts, there's no virtually no interoperability options on the Mac. But at least it's consistent and I know what will work and what won't.
On the other hand, I could also solve this problem by simply putting ALL of my contacts in my Google Apps account into the "My Contacts" folder. But that kinda defeats the purpose of having a "My Contacts" folder.
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Message was edited by: applerock9999

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. Much appreciated!
Just to confirm my understanding that 100% clear on the solution, if my wife gets her own iCloud account, on her phone she'll receive her own emails & iMessages (makes sense) but not contacts. Calendars though we could share.
Without two separate iCloud accts though -- iCloud on my phone, and her email through Gmail on her phone -- we could share all the common iCloud data (contacts, calendar, notes, reminders, etc.) by enabling the appropriate settings on her phone.
Am I correct to conclude then that the sole benefit of her adding own iCloud acct is email through iCloud (and I guess the free 5GB)? It would not be possible to simply and easily have one common 'family' address book (i.e. since while Calendars are share-able, contact libraries are not)?

Entourage Sync with iCal & Address Book - Fixed!

Finally found a solution that really works.
Background
I had the infamous issue of trying to get Entourage Calendar and Contacts to Sync with iCal & Address book for the purpose of syncing with iTunes on my iPhone.
I've had most of the symptoms listed on this site.
It only syncs one way, Entourage Calendar shows up in iCal, but it's blank, Entourage Calendar does not show up at all in iCal, but contacts show up in Address book.
I've read nearly every post about it and tried all the various fixes listed, but none of them worked, or at least not consistently.
My setup:
OS X 10.5.5 MacBook Pro (latest updates)
Entourage 2004 (latest patches)
(If your using Mobile me, log out before you do this)
Here's what you'll need to do:
1. Backup your Main Identity which contains all your entourage info, email, contacts, calendars, etc. (Just in case you goof something up)
It's located in your home user account ~User/youraccount/documents/Microsoft User Data (Backup this whole folder)
If you don't know all your email credentials such as username, password, smtp, pop info, jott it down as it will save you some time later.
2. Launch Entourage and uncheck the Sync Services. Quit Entourage and all Office Apps.
Also you should archive all your entourage data if you want to copy it to the new setup.
Archive the contacts and Calendar Events separately.
3. Launch iCal and manually delete the Entourage Calendar (if present) Quit iCal.
4. Now open your documents folder and locate the folder named Microsoft User Data and rename the folder to Microsoft User Data Original
5. Create a new OS X User from the System Preferences... Accounts
6. Logoff your current user account and login to your new user account.
7. Launch Entourage and enter your email info.
8. Now create a single calendar event.
9. Go to Entourage Preferences, and check the Sync Services. (click OK, etc.)
10. Wait 5 minutes, then launch iCal and you will see the Entourage Calendar with your single event.
You should also see your contact that was created when you setup email in the Address Book.
If this worked you've isolated the syncing problem to a corrupt file in your user account or corrupt data in your entourage account.
You can go back to your original user account and delete all the info from entourage to see if you had corrupt data in entourage, (youd did back it up first, right?) or you can follow the procedures below to move all your stuff over to the new login account.
Now you'll need to migrate your data from your Old login account to your new login account.
(I've tried just moving the new Entourage identity back to the old account, and it didn't always work)
The easiest way to move data between accounts is to login as root.
To enable the root user, Go to Utilities, Directory Utility, and under the edit menu, select enable root user, enter a unique password, later you can disable root login when your all done)
Logout of your new login and login as root with the new password you just created
When it prompts for a username type "root". If you don't have that option click the Other login and then type in root as the username and the new password.
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Now Open your original user folder located in ~User/youraccount as well as the new user you just created
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Desktop
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Entourage calendar does not sync as you are expecting, with iCal.
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Now, in iCal, create a new appointment and assign it TO the Entourage calendar. Now sync, and hey presto it shows up in Entourage.
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Hello, I have a problem is that this last few times that I've tried to Sync my iPod, it is not copying my full Address book. I have it set to sync the full Address Book but I am just getting a weird scattering of addresses of about a screen-full plus one address, the top one has no name in the list. I've tried going in and deleting from the Contact folder the isync.vcf but it has still not helped. It is the same sub-set that gets synced.
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Subsequent software updates (OS and iTunes) has seemed to have resolved this issue.
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Gmail google cal Spanning Sync MobileMe Contact Address Book = What a mess

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