Oh no... Sync Error
Recently, RIM announced the software that allows Mac users to do what Windows users have done for years — sync there desktop with their Blackberry. A long time in the running, those who used Blackberry and Mac had to rely on either 3rd party software, virtualized desktops, or hacks to sync their address book, calendar, etc. outside of a wireless corporate sync.
So, with software that’s only a week or two outside of Beta, new “undocumented features” aka Bugs are certain to pop up. And when they do, instead of navigating the endless IVR hell of your carrier (and then Blackberry), you can simply fix it yourself.
A sync error occurred. Please retry the sync.
What to do?
Well… first backup everything you can. Backup the data on the blackberry and also the data you are syncing against (such as your address book or calendar).
Then, reset your sync services on the Mac.
- Do you have a Sync Icon?
- Yes
- Sweet!
- Go to Step #2
- No
- Open System Preferences
- Click Mobile Me and then click the Sync Tab
- Select the Show status in the menu bar option
- Yes
- option-click (aka hold the option key and click) on the sync icon
- Choose Reset Sync Services
- Click Reset Sync History
If that does not work, or you don’t have a menu when you option-click the sync icon:
- Open Terminal
- In the Terminal window, type or paste the following command on a single line:
/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl reset
- When the operation is complete quit Terminal
I jumped right to your Terminal solution, and it worked perfectly. Thank you very much!
Raymond
14 Oct 09 at 9:30 am
Our pleasure! Thanks for the feedback!
Fred
14 Oct 09 at 9:36 am
Very cool. Spend hours on the BB forums an no one had a clue. Thank you. Did the same skipped to the terminal approach and BINGO! Thanku
Krish
15 Oct 09 at 2:11 am
Thanks!
I didn’t even try the sync one. I just did the command from the terminal too! Worked perfect!!!!
Yeni Monroy
18 Oct 09 at 11:40 am
The terminal solution worked perfectly. Pfew! Thanks so much for posting this.
Diana Nemirovsky
19 Oct 09 at 10:08 pm
Still didn’t work, i don’t have a Mobile Me account and don’t want to sign up for one either. I tried the Terminal Solution and still no go on the address book syncing! I’m soooo jealous of all of you who got this working!! HELP!
Greg Stortz
26 Oct 09 at 2:31 am
terminal worked perfectly for me too! THANKS!!
anon
26 Oct 09 at 2:52 am
Same here – tried Terminal approach (as I do not have MobileMe) and tried to sync again on my 8320 and it gave me a sync error.
It did work partially earlier today – by deleting all of my calendar entries.
Robbi
28 Oct 09 at 7:24 pm
If you don’t use MobileMe, try opening iSync and resetting it from within the preferences. Restart and try your sync again.
Fred
28 Oct 09 at 7:30 pm
tried the Terminal solution and this is the message I got – No matching processes belonging to you were found.
any other ideas?!
RMW
1 Nov 09 at 3:54 pm
The terminal solution worked for me! Hope this isn’t a recurring issue!
Thanks!
Mira
3 Nov 09 at 5:46 pm
Resetting the isync work, but terminal did not
THANK YOU!!!!
Melanie
6 Nov 09 at 2:30 pm
I have tried both Terminal and isync and still to no avail.
93 conflicts in address book. I then choose address book to resolve all conflicts then
‘a sync error occurred’. Tried this 10 times now. I have used BB for 2 years and never had a successful sync yet.
Maybe it’s time to switch to the iphone!!!!
RP
17 Nov 09 at 7:40 am
worked for me…shaka!!! syncing now. RP, did you try clearing your address book information through desktop manager?
Dana
19 Nov 09 at 11:09 am
Just got off phone with Blackberry. My address book quit synching on BlackBerry Desktop Manager. Here’s the synch solution that worked for my Blackberry Curve 8330 and my Mac laptop:
What Blackberry rep said to do:
Blackberry Curve 8330
Open Blackberry Desktop Manager on desktop.
On Blackberry Desktop Manager, select Device from menu.
Select “Clear” to see that all your applications show in the list. Don’t clear anything, however. When “Clear” was selected on my phone, the address book was not showing in the list. It evidently had gotten corrupted on the phone.
Go to phone desktop.
Select Options
Select Security Options
Select General Settings, then press blackberry symbol to left of main center selection key.
Select Wipe option (data on phone will be deleted)
When Wipe is complete, the phone will reboot.
Then reconnect phone to computer.
This time when Device and Clear were selected, could see address book in list.
Synched address book first as a test, which worked perfectly.
Then hit “Restore” in upper right of Blackberry Desktop Manager window, which restored my calendar and any other preferences.
HOPE THIS SOLUTION WORKS FOR OTHERS!
Here is the article on the Blackberry site that refers to this problem, but I couldn’t understand it at all:
http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/documentLink.do?externalId=KB19454&sliceId=2&bbid=MSRecommendation106
Nancy
20 Nov 09 at 3:02 pm
Nancy,
Did you try the steps posted here before the wipe? The wipe process (in my experience) is usually when there’s something pretty wrong.
Fred
20 Nov 09 at 3:14 pm
I am getting a sync error when I try to sync my BB Curve to my Mac ical that says”For help resolving this issue refer to KB19454 in the Blackberry Desktop Manager Knowledge base”. I have a Verizon Curve and I spent endless hrs with Verizon who says it is a bb issue + have no solution for it at this time. I would love to call BB but the # that I have won’t talk to me because it is geared towards small businesses. This has been going on for almost a week. So 2 questions.
1. Can someone can me a bb # that I can get through to to talk to someone.
2. Can someone try on this site to help me.
(I don’t know what you mean by Terminal… is that the browser?).
UGH.
Amy
21 Nov 09 at 8:25 am
Hello, I dont use Mobile Me so I just get the login page under system preferences…
I also tried the terminal and…
“No matching processes belonging to you were found
No matching processes belonging to you were found
unlinking and writing version 0 into /Users/mathiasvagni/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/data.version
2009-12-01 23:37:40.165 defaults[1959:903]
There is no (UpgradedbTries) default for the (com.apple.SyncServer) domain.
Defaults have not been changed.
unknown-00-25-00-4e-f7-cb:~ mathiasvagni$
unknown-00-25-00-4e-f7-cb:~ mathiasvagni$ ”
Any Ideas? Help?
I also tried to go under iSync and clear sync history and have also done a swipe.
Any ideas??
Thank you!
Mathias Vagni
1 Dec 09 at 6:40 pm
Just tried again and it worked.
Then I changed a contact on my mac and tried again.
Sync Error!
This is driving me insane.
Mathias Vagni
1 Dec 09 at 6:47 pm
Hey thanks a lot! I needed to get rid of Facebook events that I accidentally turned on, and had a whole bunch of unwanted entries. Had I found this earlier, it would have overwritten my BB calendar using the Desktop Manager for the Mac like I wanted it.
As it was, I went to DM for Windows to clear out all calendars, but when I tried again with the DM for the Mac, the same error appeared.
The Sync option worked for me. Thanks again!
Velanche
Velanche
13 Dec 09 at 11:12 pm
I followed the procedure that you posted and it worked! Finally! But to my dismay, I looked into the address book on my phone and I still saw *No Contacts.* HELP ME PLEASE!!!
Mario
14 Dec 09 at 10:22 pm
Fred- your solution worked- thank you!! The one for no mobleMe…:-)
Alice
28 Dec 09 at 3:08 pm
Skipped straight to the terminal “fix” and it worked even though it told me there were not matching processes belonging to me.
Jamison
8 Jan 10 at 8:51 am
Fred, thanks so lot, you save me!!! The Terminal command worked perfectly for me…
Howard
28 Jan 10 at 9:10 pm
Tried the isync and terminal option to no avail. Considered Nancy’s option of clearing the phone but nothing appears to be corrupted on mine so I’m hesitant to do anything dramatic. Any guidance here?
Josh
8 Feb 10 at 11:09 am
Neither of these worked for me unfortunately. There is still the message “sync error”. I can’t even reset the sync preferences with MobileMe. It is asking me to register and sign in. Do you have any other ideas how to solve the problem?
Sas
2 Mar 10 at 1:56 am
PLEASE HELP..
Just got the new Curve for Boost Mobile. keep on getting the “sync error” message while trying to sync address book and curve.. Did the wipe. didn’t help. not sure how “reset sync services” as i do not see the option when i option click the sync icon. PLEASE HELP. never had this problem.
mike
5 Mar 10 at 3:17 am
If that does not work, or you don’t have a menu when you option-click the sync icon:
Open Terminal
In the Terminal window, type or paste the following command on a single line:
/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl reset
When the operation is complete quit Terminal
Fred
5 Mar 10 at 7:51 am
Hey y’ll… Had a problem syncing with my BB Bold 9000 where the error message was saying Sync error. Entered the command given on this thread and it worked?!! Thanks guys!!
/System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl reset
John Doe
18 Mar 10 at 7:09 pm
I’m stuck…
I have bold 9700
I tried the terminal command but I got no response. Nothing happened after I entered the command…
Then I tried to reset the sync history via iSync (I have no mobile me).
Sync again. “Sync error occured”
So frustrating!!
This problem is on/off, so sometimes I sync quite successfully but other times not. When the sync is unsuccessful, it will delete certain entries from my calendar (either on bb or on mac) and I won’t find out unless I remember the appointment date/time and went in to double check. This causes huge problems, obviously.
Any clues?
TIA!
Cloudy
22 Mar 10 at 11:35 am
I have tried all of your suggestions and nothing works. All I get is “please retry the sync”. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the DM manager four times. It works for the very first sync which replaces all the data on the device, but then will not resync. This is only affecting my address book, the calendar works fine. Help?
Cutterhawk
22 Mar 10 at 10:36 pm
@Cutterhawk,
When you run the command from the terminal the response it to retry the sync?
Fred
22 Mar 10 at 10:39 pm
I have tried all solutions mentioned and i still get the error message
noelp2000
1 Apr 10 at 1:10 am
please oh please help i have been at this for hours trying all of the above & only get a small amount of contacts transferred and towards the end the same error message appears. in 2010 i should not have to input my contacts manually please help!!!
i have a blackberry storm 1
a mobile me account
the blackberry desktop manager
and a mac book pro…..please help!!
JusTaGirl
3 Apr 10 at 6:27 pm
Folks,
I have to say both the carriers and RIM are a dead loss on this issue. This website is by far the most comprehensive analysis of the problem. Trouble is that I have tried all recommendations, including the radical device wipe to no avail…I have a bold 9700 with 2,700 contacts…it worked first time then as I synched again a second time the contacts on the device were wiped and I got the error repeatedly as they tried to reload the data.
RIM told me they solved it by doing the following:
“I went to my library>application support and deleted the BlackBerry Desktop folder
I went to my library>application support and deleted the SyncServices folder
I went to my library>preferences and deleted everything starting with com.rim.”
with an iPAD and iPhone also attached to this iMAC this recommendation is terrifying. Any recommendations?
AlanC
17 Apr 10 at 3:24 pm
OK – more on this issue and radical workaround for a one time sync but here goes if you are interested…
I abandoned the Mac Desktop Manager and set up an XP instance with Outlook connecting to my exchange server…guess what, the sync failed also giving me a ‘function setcolumns failed’ error. Looking into the log files the sync aborted at the beginning when the Outlook fields were mapping to BB format…it collapsed on the Photo field. It gave an internal error 4238.
There is quite a bit on this error online and apparently it is a data integrity problem relating to photos in the contact file – my iPAD & iPhone sync without problem but BB’s struggle it seems…these guys do a fair job at troubleshooting the problem http://indemnity83.com/sync-blackberry-vista-contacts
So In the end I exported a CSV file to a brand new instance of Outlook; installed the BlackBerry desktop manager for XP, cleared the BB device and it synched fine…
A horrible workaround to deliver a one time fix but at least it proves it was a data format problem this time…12 hours loss productivity that leaves me loving Mac products even more
I Googled this some more on the windows side and
AlanC
18 Apr 10 at 7:08 am
Last login: Mon Apr 26 18:31:16 on console
MacBook:~ jwolf6589$ /System/Library/Frameworks/SyncServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/resetsync.pl reset
subarg =
Running reset
No matching processes belonging to you were found
unlinking and writing version 0 into /Users/jwolf6589/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local/data.version
2010-04-26 19:17:42.623 defaults[665:903]
There is no (UpgradedbTries) default for the (com.apple.SyncServer) domain.
Defaults have not been changed.
MacBook:~ jwolf6589$
I think this worked!!! Thanks!!
JOhn Wolf
26 Apr 10 at 6:21 pm
When I press enter in the terminal window, nothing happens – it just goes to a new line.
Tom
4 May 10 at 10:20 am
the Open terminal worked for me on the address book error, super thanks. Still working on double entries on the phone of all my calendar entries.
jens
9 May 10 at 7:49 pm
Thank you – that worked – so pleasant to have so smart people around !!!
Alexander Movshovich
11 May 10 at 8:45 pm
I have a BB 9630 and it too was having that error message. I didn’t have any of the sync icons or click option so I tried the mac terminal and pasted the command and it worked. No more error message! Thanks!
stevoramaa
15 May 10 at 12:11 pm
Frustrated! For months the sync has worked between my iMac and BB Desktop Manager. The other day (maybe after updating the software) I started getting the “A sync error has occurred” message. I just reset the terminal and deleted all of my calendar entries on the Blackberry. I am trying to overwrite them with my Mac calendar. When I sync I no longer get the error message, but the information is not transferred to the Blackberry either. Help?! I don’t know where to turn.
Robin
14 Jun 10 at 10:35 am
Reset sync data did not work but pasting the command line in Terminal did the trick. Thanks
hugol
27 Jul 10 at 5:49 pm