[Solved] Google Sync Error - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Out of nothing my contact and calendar from google account didn't sync.
(I reconfigured some time ago my google talk / hangouts, but I'm not sure that this was the reason for this google sync error)
In the sync settings of my google account an error appeared, something like
Sync is currently experiencing problems, it will be back shortly​​​​
first: it took me some hours to figure it out
nothing in this forum mentioned before helped like deleting account and google apps, wiping cache, rebooting etc.
finally ...
this is the solution / workaround that fixed it for me:​​​​
open google calendar
click in menu settings
(here are only screenshots from my german android 4.1.2, but you should be able to follow the steps)
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in setting click on your existing gmail account
in the settings of your existing account tab on add account
on the following screen select google
enter now your login and password of your (existing) google account
Open your account in settings, hit menu and sync now
enjoy and hit THANKS (or even better click on link in my signature to join dropbox) if it helped and looks like this (in settings / google):
good to hear it worked :good:
I'd like to ask you to hit the 'thanks' button, as just a 'thanks' is the only honor I get. You'd be the 2nd person after >21.000 views of this thread. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

---

Sync is currently experiencing problems, it will be back shortly ~FIX~
~For Root Users ~​-First clear Google Play cache and data
-Open Root Explorer or a another similar file explorer
-Find the file named "ect" and open
-For Root Explorer change Mount R/W to Mount R/O
-Long press on the "hosts" file and tap "open in text editor"
-See the IP address xxx.x.x.x Localhost
-Add a "#" before the IP address, e.g - #xxx.x.x.x localhost
-Save and reboot your device
-tested on a Nexus 7 2013 running stock 4.4.2 build KOT49H with ElementalX kernel
-I may have no responsibility if you device becomes bricked, do this at your own risk x.x
I hope this helped ^-^

---

bgumble said:
Out of nothing my contact and calendar from google account didn't sync.
(I reconfigured some time ago my google talk / hangouts, but I'm not sure that this was the reason for this google sync error)
In the sync settings of my google account an error appeared, something like
Sync is currently experiencing problems, it will be back shortly​​​​
first: it took me some hours to figure it out
nothing in this forum mentioned before helped like deleting account and google apps, wiping cache, rebooting etc.
finally ...
this is the solution / workaround that fixed it for me:​​​​
open google calendar
click in menu settings
(here are only screenshots from my german android 4.1.2, but you should be able to follow the steps)
in setting click on your existing gmail account
in the settings of your existing account tab on add account
on the following screen select google
enter now your login and password of your (existing) google account
Open your account in settings, hit menu and sync now
enjoy and hit THANKS (or even better click on link in my signature to join dropbox) if it helped and looks like this (in settings / google):
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
IMadeYouReadThiso.o said:
~For Root Users ~​-First clear Google Play cache and data
-Open Root Explorer or a another similar file explorer
-Find the file named "ect" and open
-For Root Explorer change Mount R/W to Mount R/O
-Long press on the "hosts" file and tap "open in text editor"
-See the IP address xxx.x.x.x Localhost
-Add a "#" before the IP address, e.g - #xxx.x.x.x localhost
-Save and reboot your device
-tested on a Nexus 7 2013 running stock 4.4.2 build KOT49H with ElementalX kernel
-I may have no responsibility if you device becomes bricked, do this at your own risk x.x
I hope this helped ^-^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
NOT Helped ...

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amirsh77 said:
NOT Helped ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Can you specify? Like your android version, your error, what you did ...

---

bgumble said:
Can you specify? Like your android version, your error, what you did ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm on 4.4.3 Nexus 5, I got error "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly! " when I want to sync just google contacts, other google options like calendar and keep are synching fine.

---

amirsh77 said:
I'm on 4.4.3 Nexus 5, I got error "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly! " when I want to sync just google contacts, other google options like calendar and keep are synching fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I were you I would remove the whole google account from the phone and delete all contacts. Boot into recovery, wipe cache, reboot and add google account.
But first of all I would make a nandroid backup!
Good luck :good:

---

thanx mannnnnn!!! your solution workd for me.
bgumble said:
Out of nothing my contact and calendar from google account didn't sync.
(I reconfigured some time ago my google talk / hangouts, but I'm not sure that this was the reason for this google sync error)
In the sync settings of my google account an error appeared, something like
Sync is currently experiencing problems, it will be back shortly​​​​
first: it took me some hours to figure it out
nothing in this forum mentioned before helped like deleting account and google apps, wiping cache, rebooting etc.
finally ...
this is the solution / workaround that fixed it for me:​​​​
open google calendar
click in menu settings
(here are only screenshots from my german android 4.1.2, but you should be able to follow the steps)
in setting click on your existing gmail account
in the settings of your existing account tab on add account
on the following screen select google
enter now your login and password of your (existing) google account
Open your account in settings, hit menu and sync now
enjoy and hit THANKS (or even better click on link in my signature to join dropbox) if it helped and looks like this (in settings / google):
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

---

bgumble said:
If I were you I would remove the whole google account from the phone and delete all contacts. Boot into recovery, wipe cache, reboot and add google account.
But first of all I would make a nandroid backup!
Good luck :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, It is working now!!! :good::good::good: but still a question : what kind of bug this is ?!! :silly:

---

amirsh77 said:
Thanks, It is working now!!! :good::good::good: but still a question : what kind of bug this is ?!! :silly:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great that it helped :laugh:
Maybe it's an error in the database on the phone, but that's speculative.

---

Finally someone has posted a solution to this problem. I just tried this on my stock non rooted AT&T S4 and although I went through the steps when I go to login to my account it says
"couldn't sign in
There was a problem connecting to the Google servers.
Please try again later"
But - it no longer gives the sync errors instead looks to be syncing on my Google contacts. It says "cancel sync" where it is usually says sync now. Hopefully it does sync. If not.... what other options do I have?!
---------- Post added at 06:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:30 PM ----------
Correction to my previous post - the fix does not work on my phone running ATT Touchwiz 4.4.2
Anyone know how to fix that wont wipe the contacts not synced yet? @bgumble

---

bgumble said:
If I were you I would remove the whole google account from the phone and delete all contacts. Boot into recovery, wipe cache, reboot and add google account.
But first of all I would make a nandroid backup!
Good luck :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
CoNsPiRiSiZe said:
Finally someone has posted a solution to this problem. I just tried this on my stock non rooted AT&T S4 and although I went through the steps when I go to login to my account it says
"couldn't sign in
There was a problem connecting to the Google servers.
Please try again later"
But - it no longer gives the sync errors instead looks to be syncing on my Google contacts. It says "cancel sync" where it is usually says sync now. Hopefully it does sync. If not.... what other options do I have?!
---------- Post added at 06:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:30 PM ----------
Correction to my previous post - the fix does not work on my phone running ATT Touchwiz 4.4.2
Anyone know how to fix that wont wipe the contacts not synced yet? @bgumble
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can export the contacts on your phone, try my 2nd solution, and with a working sync you can try to import the contacts again ...:fingers-crossed:

---

bgumble said:
you can export the contacts on your phone, try my 2nd solution, and with a working sync you can try to import the contacts again ...:fingers-crossed:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So i ended up calling Samsung - because i rely on my contacts for work/professional use, and basically got them to direct me to disconnect my google account from my phone then re connect and sync it - just to be on the safe side so if it wiped my contacts which it did not and i knew would not... id have someone to blame
disconnecting my google account and reconnecting is the solution that worked for me. Thanks for the post! Hope my post can help the next person in my shoes as this seems to be a common error.

---

CoNsPiRiSiZe said:
So i ended up calling Samsung - because i rely on my contacts for work/professional use, and basically got them to direct me to disconnect my google account from my phone then re connect and sync it - just to be on the safe side so if it wiped my contacts which it did not and i knew would not... id have someone to blame
disconnecting my google account and reconnecting is the solution that worked for me. Thanks for the post! Hope my post can help the next person in my shoes as this seems to be a common error.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
good to hear it worked :good:
I'd like to ask you to hit the 'thanks' button, as just a 'thanks' is the only honor I get. You'd be the sixth person after >21.000 views of this thread. Thank you.

---

IMadeYouReadThiso.o said:
~For Root Users ~​-First clear Google Play cache and data
-Open Root Explorer or a another similar file explorer
-Find the file named "ect" and open
-For Root Explorer change Mount R/W to Mount R/O
-Long press on the "hosts" file and tap "open in text editor"
-See the IP address xxx.x.x.x Localhost
-Add a "#" before the IP address, e.g - #xxx.x.x.x localhost
-Save and reboot your device
-tested on a Nexus 7 2013 running stock 4.4.2 build KOT49H with ElementalX kernel
-I may have no responsibility if you device becomes bricked, do this at your own risk x.x
I hope this helped ^-^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Worked like a charm ! Thanks mate. (Tested on HTC Pico CM 11 - 4.4.4 build KUT84P)

---

bgumble said:
good to hear it worked :good:
I'd like to ask you to hit the 'thanks' button, as just a 'thanks' is the only honor I get. You'd be the sixth person after >21.000 views of this thread. Thank you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, unfortunate. This was the first thread i have seen with a real answer to this issue that i know a lot of people have; i have been searching the forums for 6 weeks - so thank you!

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Still Not Fixed
I had absolutely zero issues with sync on either of my accounts when I was using 4.3 ROMs. After switching to a custom Touchwiz KitKat ROM, the problems began. After the switch and restore of data with TB, acore was chronically crashing. So I wiped and reloaded the ROM from scratch and did not restore any system data that time. At this point, I went to add my Google accounts and calendars was not an available option. aCalendar+ Tasks was. However, even after repeatedly reauthorizing that option to have access, sync kept failing on aCalendar+ and Google Calendar was not an option still.
I have dropped both calendar programs, tried the contact fixer app, tried suggestions on other sites, and tried all suggestions in this thread with one exception. I am not manually editing my hosts file because, in my experience, doing so almost always breaks something else as a side effect.
So, short of wiping my ROM again, which I really don't have the time to do right now-what is there left to try. As it is, there is no option under my Google accounts settings to sync calendars at all and Picasa sync is now chronically failing on both accounts as a bonus. Google calendar is currently the only calendar app that I have installed and it endlessly churns when attempting to load the list of available calendars.

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fallofredmond said:
I had absolutely zero issues with sync on either of my accounts when I was using 4.3 ROMs. After switching to a custom Touchwiz KitKat ROM, the problems began. After the switch and restore of data with TB, acore was chronically crashing. So I wiped and reloaded the ROM from scratch and did not restore any system data that time. At this point, I went to add my Google accounts and calendars was not an available option. aCalendar+ Tasks was. However, even after repeatedly reauthorizing that option to have access, sync kept failing on aCalendar+ and Google Calendar was not an option still.
I have dropped both calendar programs, tried the contact fixer app, tried suggestions on other sites, and tried all suggestions in this thread with one exception. I am not manually editing my hosts file because, in my experience, doing so almost always breaks something else as a side effect.
So, short of wiping my ROM again, which I really don't have the time to do right now-what is there left to try. As it is, there is no option under my Google accounts settings to sync calendars at all and Picasa sync is now chronically failing on both accounts as a bonus. Google calendar is currently the only calendar app that I have installed and it endlessly churns when attempting to load the list of available calendars.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
sorry for being late.
Did you solve the problem, or do you still have problems with google sync?

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bgumble said:
sorry for being late.
Did you solve the problem, or do you still have problems with google sync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did not solve the problem with Google Calendar itself-I went around it instead. I switched from gCal and aCalendar+ to Calengoo and gTasks and those sync with Google Cloud data just fine. The only issue is that I still get a chronic sync error on Picasa sync so I had to go around that as well using Google+ sync instead. Very strange and frustrating problem this is.

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fallofredmond said:
I did not solve the problem with Google Calendar itself-I went around it instead. I switched from gCal and aCalendar+ to Calengoo and gTasks and those sync with Google Cloud data just fine. The only issue is that I still get a chronic sync error on Picasa sync so I had to go around that as well using Google+ sync instead. Very strange and frustrating problem this is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Weird, I never dicovered issues in the software. I thought these errors were database errors. But it's defenetly a good workaround to change the software.

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bgumble said:
If I were you I would remove the whole google account from the phone and delete all contacts. Boot into recovery, wipe cache, reboot and add google account.
But first of all I would make a nandroid backup!
Good luck :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks it worked for me.