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).
Does anyone know where the setting is to set how often google syncs with the google website? Calendar contacts and mail.
In accounts and sync, there are options to set how often facebook, stocks, htc hub, twitter, weather etc etc, update but on the google page no way of telling it to say update every 1 hour/2 hour.
Am I missing something guys?
Yes, Google uses push to sync.
ok.
But can this be changed? Does push mean that it only sync's with google servers if something changes like a contact?
Every time I want to search an e-mail it starts searching on the server, not in the device itself. I don't understand this, all e-mails are in the device.
When I turn off data connection, it is not able to search in e-mails, it simply returns "nothing found".
In settings & search settings "search in e-mails" is also not available.
Totally disappointing.
Is this in Gmail or exchange? Exchange mail should work as far as I know but Gmail search function is server side (not built into the app itself).
Exchange server missing function
Dear RTContent,
It is in Exchange e-mails,
I wrote this to Samsung support:
This is a missing function report and has to be implemented as soon as possible to the phone as an update:
Please forward this to google developers!
1.) Add "search in e-mails" to the "searchable items" in google search settings!
2.) Add offline search functionality to "search " under e-mail. This means the phone has to search in e-mails first offline (in the device), than it has to ask the user if he/she wants to search in the server (online via data connection) aswell.
Ah I see what you mean now. Have you tried third party app on the market? I'm sure there are ones available with a search function.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
I have an issue with Google Now regarding multiple Calendars. I subscribe to several calendars (colleagues on my work's Google Apps account and family members on my Gmail account). However, when Google Now creates a card for the next appointment, it grabs the next appointment from all the calendars I subscribe to.
As you can assume, I am getting constant reminders from Google Now about upcoming appointments (from work colleagues it is daunting).
I would really like to use Google Now, but unless there is a way to select which calendars Google Now pulls from, this is quite useless.
Any thoughts?
Bump...
In all seriousness, does anyone know what I am talking about or, even better, know how I can deselect certain calendars from being used within Google Now?
Afraid not- I've had a look through the settings for both Google Now and also the Calendars and I don't see anything.
I get work appointments too as my Nexus sync's to Exchange, but tbh it doesn't bother me...
jmbillings said:
Afraid not- I've had a look through the settings for both Google Now and also the Calendars and I don't see anything.
I get work appointments too as my Nexus sync's to Exchange, but tbh it doesn't bother me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't mind getting my work appointments...it is the ones I get for everyone else in the office that are overwhelming. Makes Google Now useless for me. I sure wish they would allow you to select what calendars to pull from.
Along similar lines...
Any idea if it is possible to have Google Now pull data from two GMail accounts? I have my primary account linked to Google Now but I usually receive all my flight, package, purchase emails in a separate account. Both gmail accounts are on my phone but I think Google Now only pulls from the primary account. Right? Is there any way to change that or get around this issue?
Call me paranoid, but I don't like the idea of keeping my appointments in the cloud.
The problem is, the stock HTC calendar reduces available options when I'm switching from a Google account to either the phone (i.e. HTC Sync) or local account.
Does anyone have any experience with the Google calendar app and local accounts? Is it possible to use it without syncing with Google? Is there any other decent calendar app that would work with a completely local account, with an occasional backup to either SD card or PC?
You can turn off synchronization for Google Calendar under settings.
ikeny said:
You can turn off synchronization for Google Calendar under settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Somehow on my phone this setting has no effect and Google keeps syncing the calendar.
And then I'm using several gmail accounts, so the events get scattered between different "accounts". I have no idea why a simple list of appointments has to be associated with any kind account.
I don't think you are doing it right when you turned off the calendar sync. Anyway, there is an app called Offline Calendar. Perhaps you could give it a try.
I know this app. It creates a local (offline) calendar, but does not do anything else, you have to use this local calendar as an "account" in some other calendar app, like the stock HTC calendar.
As to turning off sync, I don't think you can do it "wrong". You just go into Google account settings, tap on an account (if you have more than one, like I do) and then there are sync settings, you can choose whether to sync gmail, contacts, calendar, apps, etc. I uncheck all of the boxes except for gmail, since this is the only thing I need to be synced - otherwise I will not be able to read email and that's the whole point of having a Google account. In any case, the calendar sync setting is off and still the HTC calendar app syncs every time I add an event to a calendar associated with a Google account.
Two ideas to try:
1. Use Google calendar with sync turned off. See if it still syncs new event.
2. Stay with HTC calendar and use the offline new account created by that app. Add new event to the offline account.
Try a calendar on the play store that has no sync function........ Or, don't worry. Everyone syncs... If there were security issues, it would be reported all over.
I doubt Google will show up at an event you have scheduled and mug you. ?