IPhone contacts not syncing with Gmail or Windows anymore

contactsgmailiphoneitunes

I have an iPhone 4s with iOS 7.0.3.

I am trying to sync my iPhone contacts somewhere safe, besides the backup in iTunes. I was burned in the past with iTunes backup when contacts all got lost on my phone and the backup deleted the contacts as well.

I am trying to avoid iCloud because I want to be able to easily extract the content as a flat file.

I used to have iTunes sync my iPhone contacts to Gmail. But suddenly, iTunes no longer gives me an option for sync with Gmail – it only gives me an option to sync contacts to Windows Contacts.

Windows contacts would be ok too – except this also doesn't work anymore. I'm on Windows 8 and when I run wab I only see an old copy of my contacts from a previous sync – this used to work, and doesn't work anymore.

How do I get either of these syncs working again? I'm on iTunes 11.1.3.

Best Answer

Try syncing from your iPhone Settings to Gmail Contacts using [OTHER >> CardDAV]

Do this:

  1. On your iPhone select SETTINGS
  2. Mail, Contacts, Calendars >>
  3. Add Account... >>
  4. Other >>
  5. Contacts: Add CardDAV Account
  6. Server = google.com; user name = [fullEmail]; pw = [gmailPw]; desc = [optional].

Tested 1/14/2014 on an iPhone 5 running iOS 7.0.4

Here's Google's documentation: http://support.google.com/mail/answer/2753077?hl=en

[Note: iOS7 requires clicking SAVE, iOS5/6 does not]

This cuts out iTunes entirely and provides you with options for flat-file delimited export via Gmail's settings menu.

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