Keep Gmail and Address Book in sync with ABGMerge

It's so beautiful, I think I'm gettin' all misty eyed: the venerable Mr. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings found an AppleScript by Benjamin Harley that can pseudo-sync - as in: not just export - your contacts between Address Book and Gmail. I use 'pseudo' because there is still a little manual work involved, and it isn't a true sync process through and through, but it's the best solution I've personally seen yet.

A few words of wisdom, however, before you go all download and sync happy: the script has some catches and boundaries, so I highly urge you to read through the very thorough ReadMe file (link) Benjamin provides on how the script works, and how to prepare everything needed. Also, I can't stress this enough: back up your Address Book and, oh yea - back up your Address Book before tinkering with this script. There are definitely quirks involved when dealing with some of Google's services like this, so you *need* to be aware of how this works and the best way to proceed.

With the PSA out of the way, check out ABGMerge if you've been looking for a way to sync your contacts with Gmail's, and be sure to drop Ben a donation for his hard work.

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Source: http://homepage.mac.com/bharley/BenAppleScripts/FileSharing1…

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It's so beautiful, I think I'm gettin' all misty eyed: the venerable Mr. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings found an AppleScript by Benjamin Harley...

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George Garrigues

Can the program export only PART of the Address Book file to GMail (that is, separate Groups or Smart Groups) or must the entire Address Book be exported?

Sincerely, your friend
George G

January 16 2007 at 12:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Benjamin Harley

And to Brad's question - I designed it on an Intel MacBook - but Applescripts are only PPC as I understand it. It seems to work equally well in both environments and in 10.3.9 as well as 10.4.7+ (and probably most places in between).

December 07 2006 at 9:55 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Benjamin Harley

This posted generated sufficient interest for me to revise ABGmerge and make it more friendly and self-sufficient. It is now an Applescript application, so it is a bit more stable running in the background. It also has a 'Safe Mode', that gives the user an opportunity to review changes, or restore the initial information. In limited usage, it seems to work pretty well (keeping track of changes at the contact level and within each contact). Not an ideal solution, but it may be useful (especially for those who use Address Book but spend a lot of time on a PC elsewhere, or don't have .mac).

December 07 2006 at 9:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brad Garland

Love the idea but is this just for PowerPC based Mac's? I see the .hqx file and figured so. Anyone?

December 03 2006 at 10:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kambiz Kamrani

I've been seriously dying for something like this! Thanks to you and Ben for passing this on and making it!

December 02 2006 at 10:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply