For small companies, like my one-person consulting shop and many of my clients, using Google Apps is an obvious solution to the problem of email and sharing documents and calendars. The standard edition is usually enough, which makes it free as well. So far email also seems to be delivered more quickly than through my old website host.
The most complicated part of setting up Google Apps is configuring the DNS correctly; that’s the subject of another post. The most confusing part of using it, however, continually bites and until Google fixes it (and I can’t imagine they’re not aware of the problem), will continue to annoy.
Here’s the issue. I signed up for a Google account (docs, primarily) using my standard email address. Then I set up a Google Apps account for Textuality where I have the same email address, and a Google Apps version of documents, calendar, etc. I now have two Google accounts with the same email address, different passwords, different URLs to log into at, and they show different contents. If someone shares a document with me using my standard email address, it sometimes shows up in the non-Apps account, and sometimes in the Apps account, and occasionally in both. I have yet to figure out the algorithm by which the Google documents sharing mechanism decides which account (with the same email address, remember) gets which document.
I’m sure (or at least hope) that Google will fix the problem eventually. In the meantime, it’s something to be aware of.
Not speaking for anyone but myself here.
There isn’t a very good answer to this: merging accounts is pretty much impossible. The best you can do is to change the address on the non-Apps account to something else, which can be done from https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount . You want to make sure you are logged into the correct account and out of any other Google accounts when you do this; an incognito window in Chrome (or equivalent in any recent browser) is a handy way to do so.
I’m nodding in total agreement with your review. I have my fullcirc apps address, and my gmail and it drives me crazy. So now whenever I do something from one or the other account, I make my OTHER account a member of that doc or whatever. Silly workaround.
(mmm the antispam filter has blocked my comment. I’ll try again after removing h t t p)
There’s is a beta program going on to upgrade Google Apps accounts to be Full Accounts: sites.google.com/site/fullaccountstester
When upgrading a Google Apps account to Full Google Account if there is an existing Google Account with the same e‑mail of the recently upgraded Google Apps account, that’s likely to belong to the same user and therefore the old Google Account is renamed.
sites.google.com/site/fullaccountstester/home/my-google-account-with-a-duplicate-name/how-was-a-google-account-with-a-duplicate-name-created
Once upgraded I’ve had problems to enable the Federated Login so I could still use my old Gmail account for Reader and Groups.
sites.google.com/site/fullaccountstester/home/using-mutiple-accounts
Also I couldn’t login into my Google Apps Gmail but that was a known issue and was fixed after I submitted my support request.
Merging accounts is not possible. All you can do is to transfer some data on an application basis. Still using my old Google account for Groups, Reader and Google Apps account for Gmail, Calendar.…
Exact same problem. Created a web site to manage lead sharing and used google docs to allow the users to edit the leads via the web site. Only problem is that one of the users cannot view half of the google documents. Come to find out it is due to his having a google apps account. The missing documents are available in the different google docs for google apps but the only way he can view it is if he first logs into google apps…
I guess I have to change his google account to use his old email address. Horrible workaround but thanks, hope you all are having some luck with this problem.