Thunderbird and Contact import...what works?

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Just recently I deployed Dave's release of the Thunderbird email client. So far so good, connected to my Gmail IMAP server fine, pulled a whole wack of emails down (didn't have to do that, but heck, storage is cheap these days so at least the local stuff allows me to do some extensive searching if need be and it's synchronized automatically anyways).

OK, so that's all good stuff.

But to ease the use of TB I figured I should import my Google Contacts next. Did a bit of research (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail) and discovered a fairly well recommended add-on, that being: gContactSync (https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/gcontactsync/).

Since the latest official release is way past our 45.8 TB release, I went fishing to find a matching older release, which happens to be 2.1.13:

Code: [Select]

Version 2.1.13 Released May 31, 2019 330.7 KiB Works with SeaMonkey 2.14 - 2.56, Thunderbird 17.0 - 60.*

Installed it, that went fine. My problem is that attempting to import anything from Google just flat out appears to go nowhere, as in: nothing seems to happen. Strange thing is that even turning on the debug log (for the add-on) does not produce anything.

Therefore, I'm curious if anyone has encountered this before?

Most likely I'll keep on down-levelling until I find a release that works. I want this to be a one-time sync, and well, if that fails I know there are more tedious approaches such as a manual export/import through a CVS setups, etc.

Thanks everyone,
-Dariusz

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Dariusz, never tried importing contacts but I wouldn't be surprised if Gmail has changed its API over the years and the old version of gcontactssync doesn't know how it works now.
You could try with a newer version of TB on another OS and then export them from TB and import them into the OS/2 version, untested.

[Neil Waldhauer]

I like to use vCard to import/export. I also use the ImportExportTools add-on.

[Doug Bissett]

It is more likely, that GMail is blocking the older TB browser. They always complain about our Firefox, when I use that with their web access, but they still allow the older one to work, after I specifically select the option.

FWIW, I use PMMail, which will only use POP3 (and SMTP, for sending). It works okay with the GMail server (after extensive setup), but I can't see what they (often incorrectly) move to their SPAM folder, without logging into the web interface. They also track everything that I do, and I am convinced that they are the cause of a recent surge in SPAM mail. I am not very happy with Telus, or GMail, because neither one of them will respond to my request that they stop filtering my mail, and saving my information on their servers.

I have been looking into opening my Weasel mail server (I use it for testing PMMail), but I can't seem to get the modem to open the ports. My new router (tp-link Archer C7) does it properly, so I expect that my ISP (Telus) is blocking things. My next approach is to change the external ports, but I haven't tried that, yet.

[Dave Yeo]

Hi Dariusz, this bug might show what is happening, basically Google increasing security. https://github.com/jdgeenen/gcontactsync/issues/153
There's newer issues describing your behaviour with no replies and currently someone has forked it and that is the version on the add-ons page.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Good news guys, downlevelling to gcontactsync-2.0.13-sm+tb.xpi solved the problem for me. I was able to bring all of my Google Contacts and Groups into TB. Much happier!

But, to Dave's point, this issue is apparently hitting the newer versions of TB.

In the meantime, I went looking for the option to sync up the Google Calendar in TB as well. Found 'Provider for Google Calendar', fished out the 48.x TB compatible version and installed.

Umm....no-go!

But, at least the reason seems a little more obvious, the Error Log shows failure to validate using the OAuthorization method, error shows:

Code: [Select]

...
Timestamp: 10/25/20 04:47:39 pm
Error: NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE: Component returned failure code: 0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE) [nsIHttpChannel.responseStatus]
Source File: resource://gdata-provider/modules/OAuth2.jsm
Line: 171
...

But at least this is consistent with the TB Gmail IMAP account setup steps which require us to use 'Normal' authentication instead, if I'm guessing correctly here and putting the two pieces together.

[Dave Yeo]

This might be newer, also calendar timezones.

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

Hi Dave,

This might be newer, also calendar timezones.

Thanks for the attachment.

The 'Provider for Google Calendar' version I have already installed is 3.3, so I had not installed the version you sent (that being 2.6). Given my last post I spent a few more hours investigating this to finally discover that TB has the option to "fake" being Firefox. OK, I'm over-simplifying, but point being with something like Google log-in functionality that actually allows TB to work properly.

So, specifically setting general.useragent.compatMode.firefox to TRUE (FALSE is default) now actually allowed the 'Provider for Google Calendar' v3.3 to work successfully. Not only did it get to my Google Calendars, but it successfully imported my own, as well as all the other calendars that are visible to me.

As such, as best as I can tell it would appear that I can get all my Google/Android scheduling/contact/email handling done in TB, which is an awesome setup!

Of course I now need to do some addtional testing, such as: adding new contacts in TB, setting up new calendar events and/or tasks in TB, etc., but so far, so good. Thank you again Dave for reminding me of this.

[Andi B.]

I started to avoid google services a while ago including mail and calendar as the constantly spy your location (and block you if you don't let them know your current location) and censors emails. Found out that GMX calendar (CalDAV) works better with SM Lightbird and Lightning additions than google calendar ever did. Maybe worth to check other calendar options for you too.