Lotus Nut

First of all, this is not quite as easy as it should be. For one, you can't force an initial one-way push from iPhone to Google. It's either merging both or overwriting the iPhone's contacts with those from your Google account (the contacts are actually stored in GMail). Make sure you read all of the steps below before just going through them... :) Also note that these instructions are for Windows, although this should work in much the same manner for Mac. I originally had been synchronizing with MS Outlook, but on my new laptop Outlook was never loaded. So I decided that I would make all of this work with Google now that it's available.

In my case, I had a lot of good contact information on my iPhone that I did not want to lose. But after the initial merge there were a lot of duplicated email addresses. So I proceeded with the cleanup and came up with a nice little procedure below. Also, take note of step 17 - ongoing contact modifications are only one-way (for now) from Google to iPhone. Hopefully this will change with newer versions of iTunes.

1. Get iTunes 7.7 (for Windows)
2. I'm 99.9% certain you don't have to have iPhone 2.0 software to do this since it was available from Mac iTunes for a little while, so this should work with any iPhone.
3. Dock your iPhone and switch to the Info tab for the device and select "Google Contacts" for the contacts sync.
4. Put in your GMail account username and password.
5. Accept the license agreement and this should kick off the initial sync.
6. Choose to merge the contacts.
7. Open GMail in your browser and switch to the "Older Version" at the top right. In the newer/default version, none of the contacts from my iPhone were visible (even though the number of contacts reflected it). In the older version they are all visible - make sure they are all here!!
8. Export your contacts to GMail CSV.
9. Save a copy of that CSV as a backup.
10. Modify the CSV to have the contacts you want. If you're like me, there are probably a good many one-off contacts that you don't want synched to the iPhone. I deleted the vast majority of these. The deletion of the "extra" contacts can also be performed from GMail prior to step 8.
11. Switch back to GMail (should still be in "older version") and DELETE ALL of the contacts! You heard me right...
12. Sync your iPhone again and you'll be prompted to confirm the deletion of all contacts. Confirm this.
13. Switch back to GMail and Import the CSV that you saved in Step 10.
14. Verify that all of the contacts look OK.
15. Switch back to the "Newer Version".
16. I noticed that many of my Contacts were all listed under "Suggested Contacts". You will want to select them all and choose "Move to My Contacts".
17. Sync your iPhone again and all of the contacts will be pushed to the device.
17. Please note that if you modify a contact on the iPhone that it does NOT (yet) push that change up to GMail. You'll have to modify the GMail contact and this will send the changes to the iPhone at the next sync.

If you do, then please go sign this petition: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/iPhoneAndLotus/

And even if you're reading this blog and you're not a Lotus Notes user or even an iPhone user, sign it anyway!!! :)