Mobile Google Calendars & Contacts

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How to Access Multiple Calendars

Also advice for Sync Contacts

If you only have internet use.

 
First, this one is never going to sync automatically but you can get everything you want. In your Google Calendar (pc version) open the main calendar and down the left hand side look for “Other Calendars” and below this is Add and the menu for this is Add a Friend’s Calendar and this is where you can get other calendars added in with no limit to the amount.

The second part is to get these to the phone which is done through the browser but you may have to find the address by searching Google for Mobile Google Calendar depending where you are but http://m.google.com/calendar might do the trick and it will need refreshing by you. It’s not as fully detailed as a built in calendar but it will act as an appointments scheduler although you won’t be able to use the alarms.
My way of doing it is to leave the browser open on the page and use the Menu button to “Switch Application” and bring back the Home Page.
 For Blackberry users trying to use the new Sports Calendars this will allow you to read these although you might have to use the browser search to locate and sign into “Google Calendar”.

If you have a smart phone

This was written for Blackberry phones but should work on other smart phones.

You have to share the other calendars to your own primary one by using the Other Calendars Option in the left hand column of the pc’s Google Calendar which is done by using the Add which will generate the emails to share. Once this is done you can go into the BB’s Calendar – Menu button – Google Sync – Menu Button – Options – Scroll to the bottom to highlight your Address – Menu button – Change Option – Other Calendars and you can now tick the boxes to the calendars you want to add.

Choosing the Calendar to send to from the phone.

Google Sync – Menu Key – Options – scroll down to Sync these Calendars and use the menu key again to Change Option – you can now choose not to update any at all or any of the named calendars by clicking on the highlighted one. It’s possible to go one stage further by clicking the trackball to show which Calendar you are updating to and using the trackball again to change this (also use this if your Calendar is not updating the web (pc) Calendar).

Loading from the phone’s Calendar to the Google Calendar

How you enter the dates into the Calendar affects whether they get loaded or not. The easiest way to explain is when the Calendar is open use the menu key and find “New Alarm” which will give you a brief entry field, go back one and find “New” and you will find a much larger entry field including Notes and other fields, this is the one that uploads to your Google Calendar and the first one is a local memory meant for your phone’s calendar only.

Because this seems to be one of the worst areas of exchanging information with the Google Calendar here is another way of doing it.
There are two types of entry for the Blackberry Calendar – one is the local calendar which is purely for the Blackberry Calendar and the other is the shared back to Google. Open the Calendar in the Agenda mode (set it up using the menu key) Options – General Options – Views – Initial View – Agenda (you can get into this by just choosing View Agenda from the Menu if you prefer to normally see the day, week or month) and highlight today’s date, click on the track ball and this will give you the correct one to add or update appointments which is a full detail screen. If you want to change an appointment time or something along that line make sure it opens in this full detail screen.

Different Calendar – Different colour

With the advent of the Enhanced Google Mail plug-in for Smart Phones which enables the Blackberry emailer to have almost the same facilities as the mobile Gmail it means that for every account you access in this way the Calendar will now give you a different colour and also allow viewing of each calendar individually.
Each Gmail Account will now be accessible through a different folder which also solves the problem of using different accounts to send or reply from but all emails are viewable from the Messages folder so the individual folders can be hidden in a specially created folder until needed. More about this after doing a little investigating and for those who want a different calendar for different purposes/business/family then it is now possible to have these and not to have the additional string of email accounts associated one to each and a long line of folders to go with them. Once the accounts are set up (creates a CICAL for each) it is possible to go through Options (spanner icon) – Advanced Options – Service Book – and highlighting each CMIME that you no longer need and using the menu button will allow these to be deleted although all the emails will still add to your Message folder. Each calendar can be examined individually by using Calendars – Menu Button – Scroll to Select Calendar and see who is doing what.
Even more about this in Mobile Gmail Variations accessible through “ceramic manny also wrote” in the right hand column under Reviews.

Keeping Separate Calendars 

Latest phones OS 6 and possibly 7

Use http://us.blackberry.com/update/ to make sure your phone is up to date.
Turn off the Data Connection for your phone. Now use the Desktop Manager to backup your phone (in case anything goes wrong but it shouldn’t) and then use it to delete your Contacts. You can now get rid of Google Sync using the DM’s Application manager. Unplug the phone from the pc.
Restart the Data Connection and look for the Setup Folder – Email (Envelope Icon) and choose Googlemail/Gmail to setup your accounts. As you create each account scroll down to find Synchronisation and check that Calendar and Contacts are both enabled. Back out and give the phone time to do it’s thing (at least an hour).
Your Calendars and Contacts now both show all in the Defaults but using the menu you can choose which you want to see individually and you can also add events to them specifically.

Keeping Separate Calendars by denster1 and copied from the forum with grateful thanks.

This is a shocker but very good news… I figured this one out and the solution works perfectly.  Thanks in advance to “The C Man” for your help and patience. Summary: I desired the ability to view both my work calendar Outlook 2007 / BES and my personal calendar Google / BIS on my BB Torch. Seeing both is straightforward the rub comes when you want to keep your work and personal calendar separate.  Initially by using Google Synch I was able to easily synch my personal calendar to my BB Torch device but when I did that all my personal events would show up on my work calendar.  I do not want all my personal events showing up on my work calendar.  I have outlined the steps below that worked for me…
1.  Setup –> Email Accounts: I already had an Enterprise Account and I used Google Enhanced plugin to setup my personal GMAIL account. Note: I choose not to synch work and personal contacts… I already have everybody on my work contacts list.
2. Go to Calendar –> Menu–> Select Calendar:  & Now you will see two calendars (Desktop & Gmail)  Note that this Gmail calendar only exists on your BB and is NOT your personal Google Calendar… I know confusing but hang on…
3. Install Google Synch –> Once installed select Options –> select synch Calendar –> You should now see your ACTUAL personal Google Calendars –> Now select the ones you want synched to your BB device.  Summary: SYNCH these Calendars–> Select the ones you want synched to your BB device.  You now want to select that Personal Google Calendar to Add new Handheld events to:::  We are still in options under Google Synch….  This is an important step, you must select your Google Calendar as the calendar to Add New Hand held Events to…
4. Now select SYSTEM –> Options –> Device –> Advanced System Settings –> Service Books:  Ensure that you now see: Gmail (CICAL) and Desktop (CICAL)… For my setup these are the only two CICAL’s needed.  Oh by the way, it turns out a CICAL (Calendar) is created for each email account that you setup on the blackberry which is why in step 1, I created a GMAIL email account using the Gmail enhanced plugin vice using the WEB Gmail option.
5. While you are in Advanced System Settings go to “Default Services” and select Gmail as your default CICAL.  I left my contacts list and messages defaulted to desktop which for me is my work (BES) exchange account.
6. We are getting close:  Go back to Calendar –> Menu and select “Select Calendar” You should still see the same two calendars that were there earlier (Desktop and Gmail).  Now when you create a new appointment you will see an option at the top of the appointment page to send via DESKTOP or GMAIL.  When you select Desktop the new appointment will only synch to your DESKTOP.  When you select send via GMAIL the appointment will only show up on your personal Google Calendar.  I’m sure you have already noticed that you can assign a unique color to each calendar, very convenient.
7.  With this setup: Events you create on your work BES account will show up at work and on your BB but not on your personal web Google Calendar. Events created on your web Google personal Calendar will show up there and on your BB torch but WILL NOT appear on your work (BES) calendar.

Added to the forum thread by inla and copied to here with grateful thanks

Brilliant — so happy to have a solution to this!  I basically used denster’s set-up and it’s working perfectly.  Thought I’d add a few notes in case they’re helpful to others.  I have a Storm2 on BES with my personal cell phone number attached.  Sorry if these are obvious — I’m very far from an expert on such things.

a) When you’re setting up the new email account in denster’s step 1, there’s no particular reason it has to be your Gmail account, or even a Gmail account at all (though that is the cleanest and least confusing way to do it!).  For mine, I used a newly created blackberry email account. My Google calendar now syncs to the calendar associated with the blackberry.net email, and my Outlook calendar at work now syncs to the Desktop calendar. 

b) I was having the same problem as mthastings above (followed all the steps, but Google calendar entries were still going to the Desktop calendar rather than the new one).  I had to do three battery pulls to get everything sorted out.  Signing out of Google Sync, pulling the battery for an hour or so, putting the battery back and signing back into Google Sync worked for me.  So you may have to be (very) persistent!

c) At some point during this process I ended up with a third, extra calendar called “Default” on my Blackberry (separate from Desktop).  After some searching on other forums, I was able to get rid of it by finding all the entries in the Default calendar (which were seemingly pulled at random from my older Google calendar entries — very odd) and deleting them.  It then disappeared on its own.
For even more help click on here

Re: Multiple Contacts when Syncing

Too many times the complaint comes up about duplicate contacts or addresses so advice for this is to only sync once and then opening the Google Sync in the phone untick the Sync Contacts box and add any new entries by hand. 
This is copied from the Blackberry forum and refers to duplicates created using Blackberry OS 6. My thanks to Jonathan Friesen for this:
I recently got a Bold 9780 from work (uses BES) and I also wanted to get it setup with my Google Calendar to see my personal calendar events on the Blackberry as well. My Google Calendar setup is a little complicated since I actually post most things to my wife’s Google Calendar as I have shared editing permissions with her calendar (let’s face it: she’s the social coordinator anyways–I just need to know where and when to show up). Thanks to The “C” Man’s info (http://knol.google.com/k/

mobile-google-calendars-contacts), I had setup a separate calendar on my Blackberry and configured Google Sync to bring in the calendar info. The only problem is that I was getting duplicate calendar entries each time that I synced. It turns out that with BB OS 6, it also tries to sync the calendar. I had to fix this in the BB Setup app (Setup > Internet Mail Account > account name > Synchronization Options > Uncheck Calendar). Now it’s working fine. Hope that helps anyone else who find this problem.
Working with another thread here there is yet more help in clearing duplicate entries.

Creating a new Contact list in Gmail

This was created for a specific inquiry and was for deleting the old Contact List in the Gmail web app and replacing it with the list in the phone but it will work if you need to add Contacts to an already existing Address book in the phone without deleting your existing details or in the Desktop Application. It is as written for the original inquiry.
In a Gmail account with no contacts (you may want to open a new one for this) and if you already have Google Sync on the phone then you need to delete this (preferably with the Desktop Manager)  and then install a fresh version which will now allow you to sync your contacts to the new Gmail address but you need to leave the Calendar sync out of this. It should now load all the contacts into your on line version but not affect anything in the phone’s address book. If this worked then you can delete all Addresses in your original Gmail account except those few that you might need and once again delete the Google Sync from the phone and do a new install but this time you can now log into the Gmail account that you really want to keep updated. You should not get duplicates but I would turn off the Auto Sync for this part and add any new addresses by hand to both.
It worked for me and if I haven’t explained this fully enough please use the Comments at the bottom of this page before you try it and I’ll try to help as much as I can. The major problem with doing this from a pre installed Google Sync is it will ask if you want to delete the phone’s Address Book first and I definitely would not go down that path. You can back everything up to you Desktop Manager before you do anything.
Incidentally, when I deleted the original Google Sync from the phone it said I had a fatal error and re-booted the phone but everything worked perfectly afterwards.

CICAL’s and Problems they cause

CICAL’s are created when you add another calendar to import to or from the phone which can happen inadvertently when you add Facebook, Outlook or another app to the phone and one of the most intrusive is Facebook. To find and disable or delete (except the Blackberry CICAL)  you will need to open Options (the icon with a spanner) – Advanced Options – Service Book and search for them. To delete highlight the CICAL in question and using the menu button to bring up a menu click on delete. The CMIME is the one that concerns your emails so unless you are not using this it should be left alone.

Past Alarms deleting too early 

This is normally down to lack of memory space and you can alter this by making sure all media is saved to the memory card and then going into Media – Menu button – Options – and reducing the Device Memory Limit to the minimum which will be 5mb and this should release 10mb for other uses.
Want to keep the Events forever?
This is possible for events that are entered in the phone subject to the allowed memory. Open Calendar and then use the Menu button to find Options – General Options – Actions – Keep Appointments and change this to Forever. Entries synced from Google Sync do not obey this rule and are limited by whatever you have set in the Google Sync Options.

Clearing Cache and Cookies

These are the things that help you access a site and make use of the web. Although necessary they can block up and become a nuisance by slowing down the phone or locking onto a site. Under normal use they are cleared either in a full re-boot or when you plug into your Desktop Manager but the tool for this is located in Options – Security Options – Memory Cleaning – and possibly the best set up is “Status = Enabled, Clean When Holstered = Yes, Clean When Idle = Yes, Idle Timeout = 1 Min, Show Icon on Homescreen = Yes” and this last one will allow you to clean at will if you have been constantly using the browser or data downloads without break.  

Additional advice for installing and signing into any Google app

All Google apps should be downloaded using the Blackberry Browser which must be set to Blackberry Identification (open Browser – Browser Configuration to see this) and using the address http://m.google.com should take you to a Google home page that will lead to the downloads or if you are sure of the official designation of the app you want you can append this to the address bar as /##### so this could be /mail or /sync.

When you download and install any Google App you need to  Enable Security settings because if you don’t this would cause problems. Can be corrected by going into Options (spanner)  – Security Options – Application Permissions – find Google Sync – menu – Edit Permissions – make them all Allow

Default Services.

This is another area that can cause problems as more apps are added by the ISP or Blackberry for their own reasons. Can be found by going into Options (spanner/wrench icon) Advanced Options – Default Services.

Reasons for not being able to sign in to an an app.

Occasionally, because of a font setting the first letter of a password gets capitalised so you could try typing the first letter twice and deleting the first of these.

A new possibility is that you now need an eight letter/digit password and seven letter/digit passwords are not being recognised.

If not then try:

In your pc try going to the bottom of your Inbox page and Last Account Activity – Close all other Activities and then sign out of Gmail including the iGoogle page.

Now pull the battery in the phone and give it as much time as you can spare before putting it back in and allowing the reboot. Try signing in now retyping in your full address including the correct Gmail/Googlemail. com and the password making sure it is exactly correct. Might take a couple tries but it should get there as this works for most applications.