Can't access Gmail contacts and no autocomplete in compose

fede.na

Member
Jan 4, 2013
3
0
Hi, i'm more of a lurker than a poster, but i've found myself desperate :) i've serached google and forums for hours to no avail, and cannot figure for the life of me how to do this. My mom just got for her birthday a new viewpad e100, it's mostly a crappy tablet but it get's things done, i.e. emailing and e-reading. I had lots of issues with it until now, but i was able to sort them out, namely, the app store (not google play store, some crappy store called 1mobile) would not download anything, most apps will just crash on startup (notice this isn't fixed, i mostly ended up downloading older versions of these apps to make them work, happened with angry birds and Gmail), audio on youtube is out of sync in the android browser (i ended up using Dolphin brower for youtube, but i assume this is due to the tablet being low end and hence not fixable) and a bunch of other unbearable crap. I'm just listing this stuff should anything be relevant to the problem.

Anyway, to the problem. When writing a new email, i need the app to suggest email addresses from the account's contacts (in this case, my mom's gmail account), since she doesn't remember a single email address by heart. Neither the Android default email app nor the Gmail (4.1.2 since 4.2 will crash on startup) do this, not even if i type the account's address. Now i know this has something to do with syncing and i've already tried everything i could think of with no result. It strikes me as weird that under the tab "Accounts & Syncing" in the tablet's settings i find the gmail account, but there's no "sync contacts" option, i see only "sync gmail" and "sync calendar". This led me, after a few google searches, to another problem, it seems the "Contacts" app won't see my gmail account (i gather from what i read that it is supposed to). When i open Contacts, i see only skype contacts and if i click Add Account, i only have 3 options: Skype, Facebook and Exchange, but gmail is nowhere to be found. I suspect that if i could add the gmail account to Contacts, the autocomplete would work.

I have tried reinstalling the gmail app countless times, as deleting and creating again and again the google account in the tablet, but still no "sync contacts" or autocomplete. I'm really at a loss here, even if you can't tell me how to fix it, it would be useful just to know actually what isn't working and what is, i mean, i'm not sure what is supposed to happen, meaning, is the autocomplete supposed to work right away? Is it absolutely necessary for the Contacts app to see the google account? Is there any reason why the "sync contacts" option would not show up?

Thank you for your time,

federico
 

leeshor

Senior Member
Dec 27, 2011
6,330
1,037
Welcome to the forum

I'm afraid the G-Mail app is lacking in some areas, as nice as it is in others what you want isn't there. My suggestion would be to get your mail using MailDroid or Kaiten, (Kaiten isn't free but it will do what you need and a lot more including select all and more). Kaiten is the one mail app that looks like it was designed for a tablet rather than a phone.
 

fede.na

Member
Jan 4, 2013
3
0
Well thanks for the quick reply! I tried MailDroid and, although it didn't work either, i found that it does suggest the contacts that appear in the Contacts app, namely, just my skype contacts. Even if it didn't work, this brought me closer to solving this problem, so i'm kind of excited, i just need to add my gmail account to the Contacts app for MailDroid to suggest them. Any ideas on how in the world should i go about this? It proved thoroughly stubborn that damn app, is there anyway to update it? Seems in the tablet world that tends to solve a whole lot of stuff.
 
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leeshor

Senior Member
Dec 27, 2011
6,330
1,037
I would check the Google mail on thew WEB as it has the ability to import contacts from many mail clients including in CSV format which would then show in the contacts.
 

fede.na

Member
Jan 4, 2013
3
0
Nevermind, i found the problem. Should anyone come across this thread, what you need to do is setup the gmail account not as a google account, but as an exchange account. I assumed google only supported imap, smtp and pop3. Anyway, setting it up as exchange is not entirely straightforward, so here is what you need to know:

Go to settings on your tablet and to the "accounts and sync" tab.
Select Add account (words might not be exact, as i'm translating from spanish).
Select Exchange Account (not google). In spanish it actually says "cuenta de trabajo", which means "work account", not sure why, but i'm almost certain in english it's exchange account. The icon is like the 4 vertices of a square.
Now input your gmail account and the password.
Now you will be asked to input the Exchange settings, this is the tricky part. Here's a link with the info:

What Are the Gmail Exchange ActiveSync Settings? - About Email

basically, what you need to do is:

Domain\username = google\[email protected] (you need to put @gmail.com, you need the FULL email address)
password = my gmail password
server = m.google.com (notice android will set it to gmail.com by default, but it's wrong)

Use SSL always and accept all SSL

Then hit next and you're good to go. I'm pretty sure this is not how it's intended to work... but it works. This is how people with iOS (iphones) sync contacts with gmail accounts, because the gmail app does not allow you to import contacts from third party apps (in this case, the iOS contacts app; I believe the latest gmail version does support this, but it copiously crashed on me so i gave up). On the other hand, given that this is Android, i very much suspect the gmail app is supposed to import contacts from the native Contacts app, which in turn is supposed to sync contacts from your google account... but it just won't let me, so i'll make do with exchange for a while, maybe until the next software update or something.

Thanks for the help, i hope this turns out to help someone else because it was really annoying. bye!
 
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