[antharro]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a Playbook. After updating it to the latest software, I set up a couple of email accounts which went fine. I then tried to add my Google account so I could sync email, calendar and contacts. So, I went to Settings, then Accounts, then Email, Calendar and Contacts. I entered my Google email address and password. It rejected it as bad username or password, so I tried again.

After a couple of attempts, I received a text message and email from Google saying that they had blocked suspicious activity on my account. I wet to the Google security webpages and looked at my recent activity. There were a number of items in the "Unusual Activity" log, each corresponding with an attempt I had made on the Playbook. (I assumed that Blackberry has servers in Indonesia as the number of attempts and timings would have been too coincidental otherwise). I told Google that the attempts were from me, but it still refuses to let me connect using the Playbook, and flags up another entry in the "Unusual Activity" log.

So I tried with my other Google account, and it did the same thing. I can add the Google mail account only, and I can add my primary Google calendar using the CalDAV method, but I would like to be able to sync my contacts and multiple calendars, as I see others have done.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get around this? I cannot see any method of contacting Google short of posting in their forums, which seem to be ignored by their staff a lot of the time. (On a side note, I find it incredible that a company as large as Google and with as much money as they have can't at the very least provide a live chat option).

Thanks in advance.

[Zolutar]

google has had their issues of late with Caldav and carddav, I doubt they're blocking the playbook specifically. I had my z30 get the boot from their servers a couple months ago with this on both my personal gmail and work Google apps accounts. I switched them to active sync (which still works for my accounts) and a week or 2 later retried the proper way and everything was golden again.

[darkhawk]

Hello
In a completely unproductive response.
Go to outlook.com and port over your Gmail account!

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

Hi all,

I recently acquired a Playbook. After updating it to the latest software, I set up a couple of email accounts which went fine. I then tried to add my Google account so I could sync email, calendar and contacts. So, I went to Settings, then Accounts, then Email, Calendar and Contacts. I entered my Google email address and password. It rejected it as bad username or password, so I tried again.

After a couple of attempts, I received a text message and email from Google saying that they had blocked suspicious activity on my account. I wet to the Google security webpages and looked at my recent activity. There were a number of items in the "Unusual Activity" log, each corresponding with an attempt I had made on the Playbook. (I assumed that Blackberry has servers in Indonesia as the number of attempts and timings would have been too coincidental otherwise). I told Google that the attempts were from me, but it still refuses to let me connect using the Playbook, and flags up another entry in the "Unusual Activity" log.

So I tried with my other Google account, and it did the same thing. I can add the Google mail account only, and I can add my primary Google calendar using the CalDAV method, but I would like to be able to sync my contacts and multiple calendars, as I see others have done.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can get around this? I cannot see any method of contacting Google short of posting in their forums, which seem to be ignored by their staff a lot of the time. (On a side note, I find it incredible that a company as large as Google and with as much money as they have can't at the very least provide a live chat option).

Thanks in advance.

How much does Google charge you for Gmail?

Sorry but Google is not in the customer service business - they provide a free service and you can use it at your own risk. They don't look at individual customers and they don't try to support people on an individual basis.

Might try another free service - Yahoo or Outlook, have your Gmail forward to the new account. I've bee VERY happy with the new Outlook.com email! Think Google made a mistake going away from Active Sync.

[antharro]

Thanks for the replies. If I wasn't so bought into the Google ecosystem, I would have seriously considered moving elsewhere. I own my own domains and servers, but I still use GMail, and particularly the Google Calendar extensively. Linked to Thunderbird's calendar (Lightning), my Android phone, tablet and Chromebook. My partner has her domain hosted with Google and therefore gets her mail, calendar etc through Google.

I do find it quite incredible that Google feel they can restrict my own access to my calendars. I can and do appreciate them giving me a warning that my account is being accessed in Indonesia, especially as I'm in the UK, but what's the point of letting me tell them that it's OK if they're going to ignore my feedback and block me anyway? Some method of me giving them my authorisation or approval that that connection request is genuine would be a good idea. I appreciate that it's a free service and they can do whatever they want to do with it, but it still bugs the hell out of me when I can't access my own information on a device that is more than capable of being used for that purpose. As for support, I've found Yahoo to be just as bad (highly scripted nonsense that ignores the question I'm asking), and I'm dealing with an issue with Microsoft where someone has added my Gmail email address as the contact email for an XBox account - which has taken them more than 3 live chat sessions, multiple emails and a number of phone calls to NOT resolve. So they're all as bad as each other as far as I am concerned. At least Microsoft has people you can talk to though.

I might try setting up my partner's calendars. She *is* paying Google.

One other thing I've noticed - while I can set up my primary calendar using the CalDAV method, if I go to Google Sync, the Playbook never shows up so I can't configure it. I guess this is because I'm using CalDAV and not what I would call the "unified" login that I described in my OP.

[green_ember]

Have you tried using an Application Specific Password from Google? Most likely that should fix your issue

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en

[kbz1960]

Don't have to add the device in the browser or use the 2 step thing?

[antharro]

I did wonder about using 2 step authentication. I do like the convenience of having it switched off, but for the sake of testing this it would be a good idea to switch it on. I'll give it a try and report back.

[antharro]

Ok. I've turned on two step authentication, and there's good and bad news.

- The good is that I was able to just type in my GMail email address and unique password, and the Playbook connected to Google and synchronized my email, contacts and primary calendar.

- The bad is that I still can't see the Playbook in the Google Sync devices list, as I would expect from following these instructions on the CrackBerry website. So that rules out my other calendars, which is an inconvenience.

So a partial improvement but not a complete success. Anyone got any ideas?

[antharro]

Some further fiddling... I think I've achieved a way of synchronizing my various calendars. I'll test further and start a new post with details when I'm happy it works.