What's up with iSync and Address Book

[ericmurphy]

Okay, I've got an iMac and a G4 PowerMac (both running OS X 10.3.5), a Palm VIIx, and a Sony-Ericsson T616. Both Macs are fully patched, running the latest version of iSync, Address Book, etc. Syncing works fine among all four devices, except for Address Book. I simply cannot get it to sync properly. If I edit any address on any device, now I have two versions (the original version and the edited version) on every device. If I delete the old one, it still comes back. I can individually delete an unwanted address on every single device (including .mac), and it still comes back to haunt me. I can reset every device, using the data on the PowerMac (my main machine, and the one with the data I want), and the old, deleted data comes back from beyond the grave to haunt me. Deregistering the computer and re-registering it doesn't help. I end up with four different, slightly edited versions of a given record, delete all but the one I want, reset every device using data from the machine that has the correct info, and pretty soon all those deleted records are not only back; they're doubled and tripled! Despite the fact that they don't exist anywhere, on any machine!

I feel like the sorcerer's apprentice. Does anyone have similar results, or ideas about a fix? It's so weird because everything else (iCal, Pocket Quicken, Filmaker Mobile) syncs perfectly. It's just Address Book that doesn't work.

[perfessor101]

The next time you change an address and want to synch everything, instead of just doing a normal synch on the iSync Devices menu select "Reset All Devices" and then choose "This Computer" as the device to synch all the others to. Then, assuming you are synching through .Mac when you synchronize your other computers do the same thing but select .Mac as the device you are synching the others to.

This is, of course, just a work around so in the meantime I suggest you submit a bug report to Apple here.

[ericmurphy]

Originally Posted by perfessor101

The next time you change an address and want to synch everything, instead of just doing a normal synch on the iSync Devices menu select "Reset All Devices" and then choose "This Computer" as the device to synch all the others to. Then, assuming you are synching through .Mac when you synchronize your other computers do the same thing but select .Mac as the device you are synching the others to.here.

Yeah, that's definitely a workaround, and it usually takes TWO resets to get everything working properly. I submitted a bug report to Apple; I wonder if they'll come up with anything. I have the feeling it has something to do with the cellphone, because it seems to have a hard time with records that either have commas in fields (e.g. Dr. Smith, M.D.) or records for companies that don't have a contact name. But once the record comes back from the cellphone with weird or inappropriate punctuation, the problem seems to propagate to other devices, and iSync loses track of what are new records and what are merely edited records.