gmail contact name format vs zd name format

[whileworth]

This must have come up before but I can't find anything here via the forum search.

gmail has a single field for contact name "John Blunderbuss". ZD wants you to enter into distinct first name, last name fields. The sync between the two programs does not handle things well unless the google name is an ordinary name like the example above.

But names entered into gmail like "City of Los Angeles" get turned into first name "City", last name "Angeles" by zd. People with complex names, or names like "PGE San Diego" are hopelessly munged.

Is there a solution for this? The only way I could imagine that zd could sort this out would be to present a dialog at sync time that allows you to tell it what to do with these kinds of names. And more importantly, have a simple "Name" field that is used for lists...it'd normally be Last Name, First Name, but overrideable so that names that don't fit into the neat first and last name data structure are respected.

[whileworth]

Cool...just found what seems to be the 'fix' for this. GMail has a company field and I'd not used it much; but it does sync with the zd company field. I didn't realize that one could skip the first and last names in gmail and only enter company in gmail. AND I had not seen that in zd one could choose what namestyle formatting to use in lists. If there is a company field entry, you can choose to have zd display the company name.

There are some adjustments of my data that need to be made but otherwise it looks like zd is working fine in this regard!