N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Nokia n9, PR 1.2.
With the last update, my n9 show near to each contact a field, not editable, "synct to MfE - <mail>", or, for example "synct to nokia account"... here the screenshot (italian):

http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/1...0305110304.png

Now, a bunch of questions:
1. I want to delete the nokia account (i.e. the MfE account) WITHOUT loose any contact data. In fact i want to unbind my contacts from server, and retain all data to my cell. How?
2. The "global address list" works only on the first created Mfe account? in fact there's no way to use a second gmail (for example) account for this.
3. If i create a new contact, Meego ask me if i want to sync the contact with MfE. Why not for nokia account instead?
4. If i create a contact without any sync server, how i can later sync this contact?
And finally...
5. Where is the contacts database? :D

Thx a lot and sorry for my poor english.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

I want to do this too..
Remove the service but stay with the contact info offline.

I already removed facebook from my contacts but the contacts app still fetches wirelessly for the facebook info x.x

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Have you tried with all sync'ed accounts, exporting contacts to file? .vcf files, then check them at a pc to see if the info is all there.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Sorry for the 1 month delay...
Only the contact proper info (i.e. telephone, address, ecc) are preserved in VCF file. Linked informations, including the sync server, is lost.
At this time, i don't have a valid solution.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

I have actually shot myself in the leg with this. I recently removed MfE account which was used also for Contact sync. And all my contacts were lost. I wonder why this is nowhere emphasized?! Lucky for me I had a couple of days old exported contacts on my phone. I was able to revert back 99% of data. Had to open each *.vcf file in File Manager on my N9 and add it back to phones contacts.

I've learnd my lesson, no more contact sync to online service, it is just too unreliable. So much for the "cloud" :).

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

It isn't, just store your contacts in gmail. There's even options to revert to different times and retrieve contacts you have deleted etc, it is VERY reliable

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

What if you have, for example, multiple cell numbers for a single contacts? Recently i've tried to sync MFE->google and i've lost many contact numbers.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

(full disclaimer: I have been involved as a developer with contacts on the N9 for the past few years)

Originally, it was intended to be editable. That didn't happen for reasons I don't remember anymore.

With difficulty. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest exporting contacts to a vcard, disabling server sync, and using 'vcardconverter' via ssh (vcardconverter /path/to/vcf/file.vcf) to import the contacts back from the vcard.

Please note that doing things like this is a great way to create mess if you then re-enable sync (or have the same data being synced from multiple services)

I don't remember the answer to this off the top of my head (as I wasn't too involved with the feature), but I'm not actually sure that Gmail supports GAL searching. Someone who knows more about ActiveSync might be of help, or I might try do some digging if I get some time later on. At the least, I don't have any option for GAL searches, and I have only ever used MfE with Google.

This feature is for MfE only. I'm not a designer, so I can't answer the "why", but my personal guess (note: I have no 'inside' information on this) is that it is because most of the services that Nokia accounts provided have / are being chopped up slowly. For instance, there is no longer any web access to Contacts.

Delete it, and re-add it. Yes, it's annoying.

The 'canonical' data store is in tracker (along with SMS/lots of other stored data). There is also a cache on the UI side to improve startup performance, but that's an implementation detail, and you shouldn't touch / know about it, so I won't talk about it more.

If you want to access contacts data, you should use the QtContacts API. It's fairly easy to use and get to do what you want.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Well, yeah. If you don't want the contacts to be synced - but stored locally - then you won't have a sync target anymore. That's to be expected.

If you mean that you want the contacts to be both stored locally so they'll stay if/when you disable sync *and* also synced, that isn't possible.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Note that they aren't just gone into nowhere. They're still stored with that MfE account, so if you re-add the account, they'll be back.

It's not emphasised because it wasn't in the specifications (hehe), but I personally think this makes sense. You wouldn't expect IM contacts to stay around if you remove an IM account, etc, this is much of a similar scenario: in the case of synced contacts, the server 'owns' those contacts.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

At this i point, i think it would be really nice an "extended" contact properties editor, including also the sync server... with the option of "detach" all contacts from sync, or assign all contacts to a certain server.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

I think it's fairly safe to say that Nokia won't be doing this at this point. It would probably be possible to do as a standalone application with some effort, I am happy to try answer questions if someone wants to work on that.

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Ok, so... how can i access the LINKED informations tu a given contact, i.e. the sync server?
Can you give me some code examples?

I know this is a BIG question... :D

Re: N9 contacts and sync... what a mess!
 

Contact information is accessible using the QtContacts API. A contact in your addressbook is made up of one (or more) QContact instances aggregated together in the UI (yes, sorry, not fantastic architecture, but we've been locked into it for an awfully long time).

QContact instances contain QContactDetail instances which are the actual information about a contact, e.g. a QContactName detail contains their first/last/etc names, QContactPhoneNumber contains information about one phone number for the contact. You get the idea.

To find where a contact is synced to, you want the QContactSyncTarget detail (http://doc.qt.nokia.com/qtmobility/q...ynctarget.html)