It's fairly easy to move from Google to iCloud. Here is what I did:
Desktop method:
- Export all your contacts from Gmail
- Export your calendars from Google Calendars
- Import them into iCal and Address Book (or whatever equivalent in Windows) and they will sync (got to have iCloud sync setup of course).
iOS method:
- Add your Exchange gmail account in iOS settings and allow it to grab all your data (has to be Exchange for contacts to sync).
- Once all your contacts and calendars synced (confirm they all show up in Contacts.app), go to settings and delete the gmail account.
- You will be promoted to delete the data from the phone or keep it, choose to keep it.
- Now you have a local copy of your data on your phone.
- Add your iCloud account and it will sync the local copy to the cloud
Hope this makes sense.
When I delete it, it deletes all my contacts associated with my gmail account as well. Is there a step I'm missing to transfer the contacts to my device?
What happens if I want to keep syncing with google for my contacts? I don't want to use icloud for this. What is the best way to go about this without creating duplicate contacts?
And what about those that use Windows like me?
Why would you want to move your google contacts/mail to icloud? Why not keep google, and the auto sync? I know I love updating my contacts, and having it sync automatically with gmail/the web.
Why would you want to move your google contacts/mail to icloud? Why not keep google, and the auto sync? I know I love updating my contacts, and having it sync automatically with gmail/the web.
That's a good question. If there's some key benefits, maybe someone can list them. I do know google messes up my contacts a lot. There's only 5GB in an icloud account.
The key thing that i liked about gmail in the past is the search and large amount of free storage.
I think i'll spend the weekend converting to icloud and not using google and cleaning up things. But i'll use my gmail for email only during the transition.
surely there is an easy way to do this?
(1) {Delete all contacts in iCloud to start fresh}
(2) {turned off contacts in Gmail Exchange settings and contacts are deleted off iPhone}
(3) Plug iPhone into iTunes and sync contacts with gmail using your gmail login ID in contacts menu. This gets the contacts {back} onto your phone.
(4) Uncheck the sync contacts with gmail in iTunes, contacts will still be there.
(5) Turn on iCloud contacts in settings and contacts will sync with iCloud.