Synchronizing your OS X address book with google and yahoo is very easy. However, a few interesting wrinkles exist of which you might want to be aware…
Synchronization of all contacts in all address books among all services is one of the greatest desires of many computer users. The dotmac service helps to do this across mac systems. However, how can we link our google and yahoo address books too?
OS X actually makes this pretty easy; however, be aware of the following caveats.
These two problems can be solved by backing up first:
1. Cross sync across systems can sometimes make the formatting or sorting of address books pretty ugly.
2. Syncs always carry some risk data loss or data duplication.
These next two are just odd Apple quirks. Hopefully, they will open up the sync later to everybody…
3. Sync is currently only available if you have an iPhone or iTouch.
4. The actual sync occurs when the device itself is synchronized. It also seems that it may sync when your .mac account is synchronized.
Now, the actual enabling the actual sync is anticlimactic:
1. Open Address Book
2. From the Address Book menu select Preferences
3. Select the General tab
4. Select the services that you want to enable sync
(If you don’t see yahoo and google listed, you probably do not have a device such as an iPhone or iTouch that opens this option to you.)
