iCloud

Hi all,

Larry at Spanning Sync here. As you've heard, iCloud is available to the world as of today. If you've moved to iCloud (or plan to) and also use Spanning Sync, you'll want to be aware of a few things.

Upgrading to iCloud is similar to the issue of upgrading MobileMe calendars which was a big topic of discussion back when Apple started moving MobileMe customers in that direction. iCloud calendars are represented as CalDAV calendars on the Mac. Apple simply doesn't allow syncing to CalDAV calendars. It's not a choice that we've made not to support it or fix it, Apple just prevents developers from doing it. 

That said, you can still sync with Spanning Sync even after moving to iCloud. What you can't do is sync the same calendar to iCloud as you sync to Google. The important thing to understand is that Spanning Sync can only fully sync iCal calendars that are "On My Mac", aka local calendars. To make a new local calendar, you can always do File > New Calendar > On My Mac from iCal. 

The iCloud migration most likely changed your existing local iCal calendars to CalDAV calendars, but you can change them back. To do so: 

• Open iCal
• Click the Calendars button (top left corner of the leathery toolbar)
• Right-click a calendar on iCloud that you want to make local, select Export, and save the export to your desktop
• Create a new calendar "On My Mac"
• Select File > Import and select the exported calendar on your desktop, then import it to the local calendar you just created
• Examine the new calendar to make sure everything is there. There will appear to be a bunch of duplicates because the iCloud calendar is still displayed. Uncheck the iCloud calendar to get it out of the way. When you're satisfied that the calendar imported correctly, delete the iCloud version. You don't want duplicate calendars sitting around in iCal because the duplicates can confuse the syncing system.
• Open the Spanning Sync pref pane and pair up the new iCal calendar, then sync.

Similarly with contacts, iCloud most likely moved all of your local contacts to the cloud. Technically, iCloud hosts these contacts on a CardDAV server which is similar to CalDAV. And like CalDAV, Apple doesn't allow developers to sync to the CardDAV server. The twist here is that syncing to and from Google will continue to happen after moving to iCloud, and all the contacts that are now "missing" from your Mac will be synced from Google. Since these contacts were moved to iCloud, you're now going to see two of each contact in Address Book: one from iCloud and one "On My Mac", aka locally. Obviously, you don't want duplicates.

The solution: If you want to sync contacts with iCloud then turn Spanning Sync contact syncing off and delete all of the contacts "On My Mac". (Be sure to turn off Spanning Sync contact FIRST. If you don't then they might get deleted from Google.) If you want to sync contacts with Spanning Sync and not iCloud, then open the iCloud pref pane, uncheck Contacts, and select the Keep Contacts option.

Larry

UPDATE: A Spanning Sync user asked us if it's possible to sync iCloud-based calendars and contacts "one-way" to Google. The answer is yes for calendars but no for contacts. While Apple's sync system is happy to inform Spanning Sync about changes to iCloud calendars, it doesn't tell us anything about changes to iCloud contacts.

Comments

[David Hassell]

So then what's the solution if you want to use iCloud for your contacts between your Mac/iPhone and ALSO sync your contacts with Google?

[Osturm]

Hi Larry,

Thanks for the writeup. Unfortunately I'm not quite getting my head around it.

Here's my situation: I do all of my mailing and calendars through Google. So what I've been trying to do is to use Spanning sync to sync my contacts from Google back to my Mac and I'd like to use iCloud to sync the contacts from my Mac to my iPhone. Is that possible?

Thanks very much

[Larry Hendricks]

Osturm- unfortunately no, there's no way to sync iCloud contacts to Google using Spanning Sync. In fact I don't know of any software or service that does this.

[Joshua1971]

Osturm and Larry:

Could you not use SyncMan to do this sync?
http://wateree.net/syncman/

It doesn't sync "from iCloud," per se, as I understand it, but it does sync from the Mac's local Address Book. Which for all intents and purposes has the same exact data, yes?

[Leslielello]

I have been using Spanning Sync for 2 years, but when I started my computer, I was asked if I wanted to join iCloud. I said yes, regretfully, because now it won't synch with Spanning Sync. I deleted the connection between my iCal/address book and iCloud and it wiped my iCal completely and my address book has no groups now.

Then I tried to use Spanning Sync to replace the lost iCal data and it wouldn't pull anything from google to place in my iCal. (but i checked and my calendar in google is still intact... so is my Android phone, thank goodness!)

Please help me to get Spanning Sync to work on iCal again. I am backing up my computer now so that I can completely dislodge iClouds sticky fingers from my valuable information!

[Ulrich Strauss]

First: @David: You can directly Sync Contacts from your Contacts app on Mac by enabling "Sync with Google" in the Accounts tab. Sync works flawlessly in both directions.

Second: @Larry:
Thanks for your post and it is sad to hear that Apple forbids such actions. Still I think Apple is going in another direction with iCloud since they released the full caldav urls including authentication instructions in a KB article. While this may only be thought for older OS X versions to support iCloud in calender / adressbook application this should enable any other program to also access iCloud calenders read write style. Please correct me if I am completly wrong here.

[Andy Burchett]

I did that. I have one iCloud calendar left but it won't let me delete it, so I renamed it. I'm still getting the "Will only sync one way" message and when I selected multiple calendars to sync Spanning Sync/System Preferences crashes. Any ideas?

[Andy Burchett]

Nevermind about the post I just did. It says it will only sync one way but it syncs both ways. I deleted the calendar that was making my System Preferences crash and re-made another calendar and that fixed the issue.

[Gavin Brooks]

@Ulrich - what is your contacts app? Are you talking about the mac address book? If so then I think you are mistaken - lion no longer allows you to sync your address book with google - only iCloud and Yahoo. If you are talking about the system preferences Mail, Contacts and Calendars - that has Gmail but does not allow syncing of contacts. Could you give more information about what app to use and how to set it up.

[Mattbisme]

Larry,

You said that iCloud "doesn't tell us anything about changes to iCloud contacts." But with that in mind… Could Spanning Sync poll iCould and look for changes?

If set on a timer, we could still one-way sync to Google contacts from iCloud using this as a workaround.

What do you think?

[D]

There is one thing I do not get. The "Contacts Cleaner" and "Calendar Cleaner" are working fine, and my contacts and calendars are on iCloud.

Why not use the same engine on Spanning Sync and solve the syncing problem with iCloud?

[D]

Just to let you know that I just started using another tool for syncing contacts that does support iCloud using the approach suggested by Mattbisme.

I'm (was?) a life-time subscriber :(