Develop Bugs

Birthday reminders in the calendar

I must say that I love my Desire (have had it for about a week), except for some small kinks and I'm not the big fan of the HTC Sense lock-screen (I don't like the vertical "handle", I would much prefer the default Android one.. [any tips to get it is welcome]).
But there is one thing that annoys me, and I don't understand why they didn't implement. And that is birthday "reminders" in the calendar..
I like the HTC Calendar and I "love" the integration between Google Contacts (& Calendar), the phone and Facebook... For me (as a developer) it couldn't be much more work to integrate that into that calendar as well (the data is already there, you just have to show it [more or less..]).
Anybody know if there's a way to "fix" this (a setting I've missed) or a better calendar app that can handle this?
I know that you can include birthday info in your Google Calender from your Google contacts, but that's not "good enough". For one thing, I don't have all my friends (that I have on Facebook) in my Google Contacts and I have no intention to add them to it (or go through them and add their birthdays..)
I'm glad for any input..
All the best to you..
/Chris
(I used "Google [Service]" to be clear on what I was talking about)

I have the same problem. How do i make my device remimd me of my contacts b-day?
thanl you
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

You have to do it via Google.
First you have to sync your contacts with your Google contacts. The birthday and anniversary details will be carried up to your Google contacts from your phone.
Then switch to your Google calendar. On the left hand side in the Other calendars section, click "Add", select "Browse Interesting Calendars" and click the "More" tab. From the displayed list click the "subscribe" link against "Contacts' birthdays and events."
This adds your contacts' birthdays to your Google Calendar, which when sync'd with your phone will appear on you phone's calendar.
I admit this is not straightforward and I would have liked to have seen the phone do this by itself.

And what can we do with the contacts stored on the phone and no as a gmail contact?
Thanks!

meson1 said:
You have to do it via Google.
First you have to sync your contacts with your Google contacts. The birthday and anniversary details will be carried up to your Google contacts from your phone.
Then switch to your Google calendar. On the left hand side in the Other calendars section, click "Add", select "Browse Interesting Calendars" and click the "More" tab. From the displayed list click the "subscribe" link against "Contacts' birthdays and events."
This adds your contacts' birthdays to your Google Calendar, which when sync'd with your phone will appear on you phone's calendar.
I admit this is not straightforward and I would have liked to have seen the phone do this by itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wonder if someone could help me with this. I had this all setup and it showed my birthdays fine.
Then I added a couple more birthdays to contacts and they didnt show even after syncing rebooting an taking off the calendar and putting it back on.
Now I cannot at all get the calendar to show ANY birthdays. Ive got it all set up right, and i;ve syncd. They show on the google calendar on the laptop here, it shows all tasks and birthdays, however the calendar on the phone doesnt show anything other than uk holidays. Ive messed with every setting possible...HELP!

Julian1984 said:
And what can we do with the contacts stored on the phone and not as a gmail contact?
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On your phone you have three types of contacts: SIM contacts, Phone contacts and Google. Obviously, SIM contacts reside on your SIM card; Phone contacts in the phone and Google contacts on Google Mail.
As you have pointed out only Google contacts will synchronize with your Google Mail account. But all is not lost. You won't have to type in all your contact details again because you can link contacts together in the phone.
What you do is to create Google contacts that duplicate each of your phone contacts. Just create each Google contact on your phone with the same name as each existing phone contact. You do not need to include any details, just create them as empty contacts. Once you've done this, they will appear as two separate contacts in the contact list.
Now the magic. For each person, edit either one of their two contacts. You will see that you can link each contact with another contact. If you've used the same name for your Phone and Google contacts it will already be suggesting that these two can be linked together. So link them.
Now you will find your two linked contacts now appear as one in your contact list. And these linked contacts will now synchronize with your Google Mail account contacts and carry all the details from your original Phone contact with them.
Hope this helps.

eboBirthday from the Marketplace. Free.

kevano22 said:
Then I added a couple more birthdays to contacts and they didnt show even after syncing rebooting an taking off the calendar and putting it back on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had this too. Only birthdays that were assigned to contacts at the time I created the calendar online show now.
I'm going to try and delete that calendar and re-create it but something is definitely wrong when you subsequently add birthdays after making that calendar.

Right, one thing I've found is that the birthdays I've added on the phone have NOT made their way back into Google's cloud. I've re-entered them in GMail online and re-created the calendar to show birthdays but they still aren't showing, not online and not in my phone!

Right, just re-added the calendar again online and it's now showing in the web calendar. After a refresh of the calendar on the phone, it's now showing there too.
So numerous bugs. If you want to see your birthdays, the process seems to be:
1) Enter them all online in your Gmail contacts
2) Delete then recreate your "friends birthdays" calendar in Google Calendar online
3) Refresh your phone
If you add any new birthdays, you'll need to do this all again. Pretty poor

tifosi256 said:
Right, just re-added the calendar again online and it's now showing in the web calendar. After a refresh of the calendar on the phone, it's now showing there too.
So numerous bugs. If you want to see your birthdays, the process seems to be:
1) Enter them all online in your Gmail contacts
2) Delete then recreate your "friends birthdays" calendar in Google Calendar online
3) Refresh your phone
If you add any new birthdays, you'll need to do this all again. Pretty poor
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sounds like a horror story - here was i thinking that someone would have written an app to read birthdays from built-in phone contacts ... :-(

mrdo said:
sounds like a horror story - here was i thinking that someone would have written an app to read birthdays from built-in phone contacts ... :-(
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.

tifosi256 said:
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks tif I will try it later. Got that birthday program and its cool but I'd like to see them in my calendar too!

tifosi256 said:
Well, it's certainly sub-optimal. I'd say the main bug is the phone not sending birthdays entered on it back to Google. The non-refreshing calendar thing I can kind of understand. I guess the additional calendars are assumed to be static (like UK Public holidays etc). Just a guess. I'd heard about the birthday syncing bug on another android phone, kinda hoped it would be sorted on the Desire.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it takes about 12-18 hour until birthdays are synched with my calendar, but only when i refresh the calendar manually (menu -> more -> refresh)
Try to add a birthday @ google contacts, wait 24 hours, refresh the calendar.
The only way it works for me.
When i add a birthday to a contact (when creating the contact), the contact disappers lol.

@meson1: I thank you for your post, and I guess it could be helpsome for someone but as I said in the original post. I know that you can do that, bit I don't want that.. Don't want to go through and manually add a hundred people to my Google contacts.. First there are already too many posts in there, second: too much work for too litle result and för something that more or less should be given..
I will check out that app. But I'm still looking för a good solution to this problem.. (anybody know if there's än API för the calendar?)
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

ChaosOfChris said:
@meson1: I thank you for your post, and I guess it could be helpsome for someone but as I said in the original post. I know that you can do that, bit I don't want that.. Don't want to go through and manually add a hundred people to my Google contacts.. First there are already too many posts in there, second: too much work for too litle result and för something that more or less should be given.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm afraid I don't know a way to do this for all your contacts enmasse. My experience with this stuff is limited. I looked into all this shortly after I got my Desire not having had any experience of Google Mail or Android before. After some experimentation that is what I have found.
I do agree that this part of the functionality is extremely lacking and it seems from other peoples' posts that it is also extremely buggy too. I do not like having to go via Google to do this stuff. I think this stuff should be integrated into the phone by itself and then linking to Google and anything else should be an extra.
It's all the more annoying that it's an obvious function to include, but that no-one has connected the dots. Or at least connected them in a technically competant fashion.
If I knew how, I'd knock up a really simple app to let you sync birthdays and anniversaries in the contacts to the calendar. As it is I'm still trying to wrap my head around the Android SDK and Java let alone doing anything practical.
Perhaps there's someone out there that is further up the Android Development learning curve that can put something together.

If I had the time (and not already too many projects to work with) I could perhaps put something together (If I knew there was some nice APIs)...
But I tried eboBirthday and it works ok.. (Far from ultimate and I can't even call it "good"..). First it downloaded all the birthdays from Facebook (and displays it in a extremely plain interface). But I can't say that it went smooth.. It was a bit "buggy" and I got an error at the end (even if it seemed to have downloaded all the info fine).
Then by using eboBirthday Contact Sync (also free in the market) that match my Google Contacts with my Facebook contacts and updated them..
And when I looked at my Google Calendar, the info was already there (no need to remove the Contacts birthdays calendar etc).
And then I just synced my calendar in the phone and now, at least, got all the birthdays for my Google Contacts in my calendar (plus reminders from eboBirthday).

whats the best way to manage contacts?

Hi folks,
couple of questions around contacts.. both my wife and i now have the desire.. she just couldnt keep her hands off mine so i bought her one over the weekend..
She's keen to have her contacts in one place, set up calendar events for birthday etc.. Is that best done in gmail and then sync with the phone?
Also why can i see my facebook picture in messages (and can i get rid of it?) but i cant see my wifes when i get a message from her?
How do you get the contacts from the phone book into gmail?
Cheers,
Mick

It took me a while to figure out that there are 3 types of contacts
- phone
- google contacts
- facebook
Your phone contacts do not synchronize by default.
Google contacts are synchronized with your Gmail contacts (both ways).
Facebook contacts don't need an explanation
You can create all 3 types for one person and then link them (although you may experience some inconsistencies) so you will have one entry per person.
I myself have all the contacts saved as google contacts and I can manage them either in Desire or via my Gmail account.

so if you have phone contacts.. can you export them to google contacts?

micks_address said:
so if you have phone contacts.. can you export them to google contacts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, you can. I exported my Phone contacts to the SDcard and imported them to my Gmail account.

Thanks - and in gmail then can you set up birthdays etc.. and the phone will then pop up reminders?
cheers for your help
mick
ferus said:
Yes, you can. I exported my Phone contacts to the SDcard and imported them to my Gmail account.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Yes, you can manage your contacts via Gmail and sync them to your phone.
And about the birthday reminders - they do pop up (sort of).
I don't find the birthday notifications good enough. The phone reminds you 7 days in advance (which is too soon in my opinion) and only by showing you a little green sign in your phonebook. No sound, no vibration... nada.
I ended up creating an appointment for all my main contacts (using Google calendar, so it wasn't that big of a deal) so I would not forget them.

cheers - it would be nice alright if it would give you a pop up for appointments.. i guess the calendar is the way to go.. with gmail - can you set up appointments there.. and sync them with your phone? or do you use the phones calendar to set up appointments?
thanks,
mick

The synchronization works both ways. You can add/remove appointments on your Desire and they will be added/removed to your Google calendar (and vice versa).
EDIT: Desire can also show all your shared calendars as well (with corresponding colours). For example my wife shares her calendar with me (so I don't have to ask for the millionth time when some of her appointments are due) and I can see her entries marked in a different colour in my Desire's calendar.
The calendar sharing must be done from Google Calendar itself.
As for the notifications... I was trying to find an application which would extract birthdays from your contacts and either set them as appointments automatically or manage the reminders from the app. Unfortunately I was not able to find a working one.

My Favorite is using Google Contact method. So our contact will auto Sync with Google.. this is seamless backup solutions for me

Just bought my Desire
I wanted to start out clean, so I wiped out my Google contacts and calender.
Now I'd like to pull all of my FB friends to the phone and to Google Contacts, including birthdays into calender.
I've set up the sync to FB, and when going to People -> Online Directories -> FB I can see all of my FB friends, and can even call which ever of them has a phone number available on he's details, but for every contact who's details I want to see, the phone has to connect to the internet to retrieve that information, meaning it's not stored locally on the phone. Also, there are no contacts at People -> All.
Also, birthdays now appear on the phone's calender, but after syncing the phone calender with Google calender, I don't see any of that on there, meaning it doesn't sync ...
Another glitch is that although birthdays now all appear on the phone's calender, events which I have marked as attending on FB don't appear at all on the phone's calender.
Basically what I'd like is to copy all of my FB friends to my phone's memory as well as to Google contacts, and keep them linked and auto-synced.
Also to have all the birthdays that I already have on my phone's calender appear on my Google calender automatically, as well as FB events.
Is that too much to ask? :-X
Help would be much appreaciated...

So no ideas how to get it done... ?

Solution for birthday notifications
Go to a contact (any contact) and then go to the events tab (with the circle arrows). Press menu, go into settings, and there is your holy grail.

How does that help ... ? :-X

Facebook calendar listing things twice on my calendar.

for wahtever reason, SOME, not all of my facebook events are listend twice on my calendar. You'd think if it was double posting from syncing twice, everybody would have double birthdays listed. This isn't the case, only SOME are doubled up. When I remove the facebook calendar from view, they both disappear.
Anybbody have any idea whats going on? It all started after I installed the toastmod froyotized kernal. The calendar items also would flash so i think there might be some issues there.
Other than that everything is great. Thanks.

anybody have any idea wahts going on here?

Sounds like an issue with the Facebook app and I am sure that nobody here is the facebook app developer so I would ask facebook.

CrazyFoool said:
anybody have any idea wahts going on here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do you have both FB and FB for sense synced?

I'm getting this problem as well.
Under the calendar app, I have 4 possible calendars that I can select: My Calendar, my google calendar, UK Holidays and my facebook calendar.
From trial and error it's only when I select My Calendar that I get duplicate facebook birthday entries. For some reason my facebook birthdays don't even show up in the calendar when the facebook calendar is selected.
Seems odd, not really sure what's going on.

[Q] Facebook Contacts?

I like to have my contacts to have their Facebook profile pictures but, I don't want to have all my Facebook contacts on my phone. I have selected to only sync with current contacts. But, it still puts all of my Facebook friends on my phone. It wouldn't be a problem since under "People" I can select to see only "google contacts" but, they are there when I open my "Dialer" on my phone. It used to just sync with my phone contacts and wouldn't put all of them on my phone. This is highly annoying because it used to work when I got my evo last summer. Anyone have any advice to sync my current contacts with out all of my Facebook contacts being synced? Thanks!

Go into People. Then hit Menu, click view. At the bottom, uncheck Facebook contacts and they'll disappear. One other thing that you can do if you use your gmail for contacts as well as email is check "only with phone number. There are lots of other options in there.

Yeah tried it but they still show up and I still have to sort and search for my real contacts in the dialer. Guess ill just have to deal with it. Thanks for the help tho
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

Contact Syncing with too many exchange, mobile life, google + .. CONFUSED.

OK.. so I'm a little confused here. I've got 2 gmail accounts setup as exchange services on my SGS3.. one of them has all my phone contacts, which I've been syncing to for a couple years on my iPhone (up until the SGS3). The other one (also a gmail) has no phone contacts in it (that I am aware of) though I'm sure has email contacts as gmail likes to cache senders and recipients to help your email experience - which is fine.
Ok, then add to the mix, Mobile Life contacts from T-mobile which I guess is part of the stock rom which I am using, then google plus, which is also pre-installed I guess unless I installed it and don't remember (which is possible, since I installed a bunch of stuff in the beginning setting it up and playing around).
Then we can also add calendar entries which are also being sync'd, again should only be from my 1 single personal phone email - but I'm not getting sync'd twice.
OK: So to core of my question/problem. Now I have multiple duplicate entries when I send an email etc, and they are like multiples of the same people, same information, some correctly formatted, some not.... and somehow my calendars merged and I get multiple alerts and notices from 2 calendars for the same entry, even though I only added it to my 1 calendar on the personal phone gmail account.
Just a little background so everyone will fully understand, whenever I learned about syncing via exchange with my iPhone to a Gmail account, I made a personal PHONE ONLY gmail (ie: [email protected]) which I used pretty much exclusively for contacts, calendar, email from/to the phone. Then with every new phone, syncing all my personal info was simple. The other gmail account has like 3 or 4 emails accounts (business, personal, etc) all forwarded to it - but I never used it as a cloud for contacts or calendars. Google + and Mobile Life I didn't even know about until this phone.
SO: How do I edit and remove the MULTIPLE duplicates while keeping the cloud god's happy? Like as an example, one of my son's contacts has his email contact 4 times, and only 1 is formatted correctly...
IE: John's Phone <[email protected]>
the other three are formatted something like this
"John's Phone" <[email protected]>
[email protected] (John's Phone)
<<"John's Phone"> <[email protected]>>
All very strange.... some have pictures set for the contacts, others do not....... its a mess.:silly:
NOTE: I'm sorry to whoever actually has [email protected] - I hope this doesn't get spam to your acct

Go to account settings and when you select an account you can uncheck what you want to sync, so just uncheck contacts and calendar on the accounts you don't want
Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

i have the same problem . Now i have 3 or more similar contrats. I want to be able to choose which to display like in gibgerbread. You can check or uncheck. Or either have gmail not syncing my contacts
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