This may be one of the ugliest icons that you’ve seen on your Macintosh computer but this is a powerful little app. It synchronises your Apple Contacts (from iCloud) with your Google contacts. This means that any contacts or groups you create in Gmail or on an Android device are available on your iPhone and OSX and iCloud, and vice versa.

Gmail and Google Apps users can easily sync their Google Calendars with their Mac by following these simple steps. It’s important to keep in mind that any calendar found in the My Calendars section of Google Calendars will sync with your Mac, along with your Contact’s Birthdays and Events.

I find this app really handy because I have a stack of groups that I have created in my Apple Contacts. I’d like to be able to send out bulk emails or a group SMS message to these people from my Android phone. The problem is that Apple and Google are enemies so iCloud will not sync with Gmail. ‘Contacts Sync for Google Gmail’ connects these 2 worlds of iCloud and Gmail together.

This picture explains it all.

‘Contacts Sync for Google Gmail’ synchronises your contacts between Gmail and iCloud. Note that this is not syncing your Apple computer directly with your Android phone. The synchronisation is being done ‘in the cloud’. Once Gmail (on the web) and iCloud (on the web) are in sync it flows down to everything else (your phone and computer) automatically.

Gmail and iCloud are synched in the cloud by ‘Contacts Sync for Google Gmail.’ Then Gmail synchronises with your Android phone while iCloud syncs with your desktop computer (and iOS devices), which means everything is kept in sync.

Google Apps Manager, or GAM for short, is a program that helps you manage common tasks for your Google Apps domain. It is especially helpful for running large batches of commands that would be very time consuming if done by hand. GAM is different from many Google Apps tools in that it is not web based.
Google Cloud Directory Sync is a free Google-provided tool that implements the synchronization process. Cloud Directory Sync communicates with Google Cloud over Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and usually runs in the existing computing environment. Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) is provided by Microsoft as part of Windows Server.
Step 1: Enable IMAP in the Admin console. Sign in to the Google Admin console. Verify that IMAP is turned on for your users. Follow the steps in Set up IMAP. Step 2: Set up user machines.

Google Apps Directory Sync Mac Pro

Step 1: Download the app from the Apple Store here:

https://macappsto.re/au/yme7A.m

(or search for “Contacts Sync for Google Gmail” on the Mac App Store)

Step 2: The first thing you need to do is enter your account details for your Google account and your Mac iCloud account. To do this go to ‘Accounts to Sync’ and log into Google and then log into Mac.

Log into your Apple iCloud account

Step 3: Now you can select ‘sync.’ There are three options:

2 way sync will merge all your contacts together.
Gmail –> iCloud will delete all your iCloud contacts and import your contacts from Gmail.
iCould –> Gmail will delete all your Gmail contacts and import your contacts from iCloud into Gmail.

After the sync is complete it will notify you of which contacts were updated.

You can keep the app running in the background and select ‘Auto Sync’ so that changes to either iCloud or Gmail are copied across. Otherwise you can manually sync when you want to.

I found that after the sync I had a lot of ‘duplicate’ contacts. (I had 2 or 3 versions of the same contact.)

Thankfully Gmail has the ability to find duplicate contacts and to merge them together.

Google Apps Directory Sync Macbook

(You can’t do this in the Apple Contacts so the merging needs to be done on the Gmail side).

To merge contacts, firstly log into your Gmail account and select “Contacts” under the “Mail” menu.

Now go to the “More” menu and select “Find & merge duplicates…” This will find all the contacts that have similar data. Don’t worry, it will prompt you with all the contacts it has found and prompt you to continue before it merges them.

I found that I had to use contact sync to sync between iCloud and Gmail, then I ran find and merge duplicates, then I synced again, and so on, and after I had done this cycle for five times all the duplicates were removed.

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