Syncing iPhone 3G creates unwanted new contacts in Gmail contact list.

For reasons that are unknown to me, I have many multiple duplications of contacts in my contact list. So, using the contact manager in Gmail I spent many hours cleaning up my contact list so that all of my contacts were correct and not duplicated. However, as soon as I synced the iPhone 3G I immediately had twice as many contacts as before I started, once again ending up with hundreds of unnecessary contact duplications.
I have now spent many days reading internet blogs and forum posts, and came up with the following (which I incorrectly thought was the solution):
1] In iTunes, I clicked on 'Edit' --> 'Preferences' --> 'Devices'. Here, I enabled the option to 'prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically'. I also enabled the option to 'warn when any of the data on this computer will be changed'.
2] With the iPhone connected, in iTunes I clicked on 'devices' --> 'iPhone' --> 'Info'. Here, I un-checked the option to 'sync contacts', followed by clicking the button 'remove contacts'.
Now I confirmed that there are no contacts on the iPhone. Zero. None.
3] In Gmail, I once again spent many hours going trough all of my contacts, cleaning up the unnecessary duplicates. This time, however, I chose to export my contact list to a .CSV file on my computer, so that if this happens again I would just delete them all and restore my contact list fro this backup file.
Now I have 0 contacts on the iPhone, and approximately 250 contacts on my Gmail account.
4] In iTunes 10.2.1.1 running on Windows 7, I once again clicked on 'Edit' --> 'Preferences' --> 'Devices'. Here I now clicked the button to 'reset sync history'.
5] I connect the iPhone to the computer, re-enable the option to 'sync contacts with Gmail' and click the 'Apply' button. The iPhone sync process begins and I am presented with the following message:
Syncing with Google contacts will change more than 0% of your contacts on this computer.
Information: Contacts. Add:41. Delete:0. Modify:2
Now I already confirmed that there were no contacts on the iPhone, so where are these 41 additions and 2 modifications coming from !?
I let it happen, knowing that I can repeat this process, using the '.CSV' backup file containing my correct contacts. When the Sync finishes, I log in to my Gmail account and check my contacts. I find that I now have approximately 360 contacts (which is a lot more than the original 250 plus 41), many of which are duplicated multiple times (one contact is even duplicated 6 times). I also notice contacts which I had previously deleted from my Gmail contacts list have now returned.
As there were 0 contacts on the phone, where are these duplicates and previously deleted contacts coming from when I sync the iPhone !? Somebody from Apple please help me.
- James.

O.K. I may have fixed it (time will tell).
As I had previously chosen to sync with Microsoft Outlook 2010, but the trial period expired and the price to but it was far too high, so I changed to Syncing with Gmail. Therefore I wondered if Outlook may be affecting the iTunes sync even though it was not current chosen in iTunes contact sync option. So, I un-installed Microsoft Office 2010 and re-booted the PC. Now, pressing the 'Rest Sync History' button in iTunes no longer created new contacts in Gmail.
However, this did not completely solve the problem. With 0 contacts on the phone, and 0 contacts in Gmail, syncing the phone still re-created 41 of the previous contacts. Thew only way I could get rid of these 41 contacts was to deleted them one at a time from the iPhone itself. Doing it from Gmail, or un-checking the iTunes 'sync contacts' option to delete all contacts from the phone at once, did not work; the contacts still kept coming back.
Funny thing though, iTunes did indicate that it would add 41 contacts when I synced the phone to the computer, but after deleting them from the phone it now warned that it would delete 41 contacts from the computer. But, these contacts were not in my Gmail, so I still don't know where they were coming from.
Either way, after many hours spent over many days, I seem to now be able to sync my phone contacts with my Gmail without it creating any more unnecessary duplicates.
I hope someone out there can tell me why this happened, and I hope my experiences with this help someone else in a similar situation.
- James.
Message was edited by: jal741

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    Message was edited by: jal741

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