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gContactSync Preferences

To access the Preferences

1. Open Thunderbird if necessary
2. Go to the Tools menu and left-click on Add-ons
3. Select gContactSync from the list of add-ons and click the Preferences or Options button

Preferences

There are two tabs for preferences. The label of the preference is in bold, followed by a space and the default value in parentheses.

gContactSync Preferences

gContactSync has several options that you may customize to change its behavior, add or remove accounts, and fix bugs. You can access the Preferences dialog two ways: If you have the Address Book window open, just click on the gContactSync menu and click Preferences. Otherwise go to the Tools menu and click Add-ons. Then click Options (or Preferences) under gContactSync.

Main Preferences

Automatic Synchronization

• Synchronize contacts automatically (checked) - Check this box to synchronize contacts whenever you open the Address Book window, and schedule another synchronization after a certain interval of time. If you uncheck this you can synchronize your contacts manually by clicking on the Sync button in the toolbar, or through the gContactSync menu.
• Synchronize interval (120) - You may specify how long gContactSync waits, ''in minutes'', between synchronizing your contacts. If you only want gContactSync to synchronize when you first open the Address Book window set this to 0.
• Initial sync delay (5) - How long gContactSync waits after you open the address book before synchronizing, in minutes. Setting this to 0 will not start automatic synchronization until you manually start the first one.

Sync Behavior

• Synchronize postal addresses (checked) Check this to synchronize postal addresses.
• Display a summary after every manual sync (checked) If checked, gContactSync will display a brief summary of the changes it made after you manually click the Sync button.
• Add phone number type fields (ignore existing field names) (checked) Adds type next to Thunderbird's phone numbers. This allows more than one phone number of each type, similar to what Google has. See this blog post for more details: http://www.pirules.org/blog/?p=343
• Delay between accounts (ms) (5000) How many milliseconds to wait between synchronizing address books. I recommend several seconds if you sync multiple address books with the same Google account.

Logging

• Enable Logging (checked) - gContactSync keeps a log file that helps me troubleshoot issues, and show you what it is doing. If you want the best performance possible you can uncheck this, but I will ask you to enable logging and verbose logging if something isn't working properly.
• Enable Verbose Logging (unchecked) - Log additional information in the log file. This should only be checked when you are getting ready to submit a log for troubleshooting because it will slow synchronization down noticeably.
• Log errors in the Error Console (for debugging) - This is a Thunderbird preference for whether errors in extensions such as gContactSync should be logged to the Error Console. Check this, restart Thunderbird, and look in the Error Console after trying to recreate a problem before submitting an error.

Interface

Buttons and Menus

• Enable the gContactSync Menu (checked) - gContactSync places a menu in the Address Book window with some useful links to Synchronize contacts, visit the support forum, read the wiki, and submit an error.
• Add Replace to and Replace from Server links to the Address Book context menu (checked) - If this is checked, gContactSync places a Sync button in the toolbar of the Address Book window.

Contacts List

• Rename the phone column labels (checked) - Renames the phone column labels in the address book to "First Number", "Second Number", etc. See this for more details http://www.pirules.org/blog/?p=343
• Add the new fields to the column labels (checked) - Adds the new fields that gContactSync adds to Thunderbird to the column label list in the Address Book. They aren't displayed by default, but you can add the new columns manually.

Address Book Contact Details

• Enable links for various IM protocols (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) (checked) Adds links supported by many IM clients to IM addresses.

Advanced

Address Book Backup Policy

• Backup interval (days, -1 to disable) [14] gContactSync backs up the address books before synchronizing it if it hasn't been backed up in the specified number of days.

Other

• 'Unresponsive Script' warning delay time (0 to disable) Thunderbird displays an "unresponsive script" warning if a certain amount of time passes after a script has started running. gContactSync may take some time to synchronize contacts, so I recommend setting this value to 0. This is a Thunderbird preference--not a gContactSync preference--and is in this dialog for easy access.
• Minimum number of contacts to delete before requesting permission (checked) gContactSync will ask for permission before deleting more than the specified number of contacts from either Google or Thunderbird.
• HTTP Request Timeout (ms, 0 to disable) - Maximum timeout, in ms, for an HTTP request.
• Delay between HTTP requests (ms, 0 to disable) - The delay, in ms, between HTTP requests. If this is too low Google may reject requests, which will cause sync errors.

Please contact me with any comments, or suggestions. All tutorials, add-ons, programs, tweaks, and fixes on this site are tested by me, but use them at your own risk. Always backup your important files and contacts. Copyright 2007-2019.