New utility deep cleans contacts, calendar and Sync Services

Mac vendor Spanning Sync late last week released its suite Spanning Tools that can clean and repair contact and calendar data as well as manage Sync Services. The Contacts Cleaner and Calendars Cleaner applications go well beyond searching for duplicates routines already found in the programs, adding searches for badly-formatted names and titles, as well as invalid dates. These can easily occur as we move data from program to program or from service to service. I found the settings in Sync Tune-Up very interesting. Firstly, the program lists all applications registered for syncing. It lets you manage this registry on an application by application basis. Running through the list I found sync registration for apps I downloaded once for a demo and then tossed. It can't hurt to remove them. There's a note in Sync Tune-Up that says that the only way to restore the syncing will be by opening the application or by turning on the setting in the app's preferences. Under the Options Tab, there's a button that will stop all Sync Services functions, and a button that will remove sync data from the Sync Services database and force all sync applications to refresh their settings. There's also a button for a "nuclear option:"

The nuclear option goes a step further and deletes the entire Sync Services database which is then rebuilt from scratch. The nuclear option should only be taken when all other efforts have failed, but normally will not affect any personal data.

The suite costs $19.95 and runs only under Mac OS X 10.5 or greater (in other words, flavors of Leopard). Of course, it goes without saying that you should make sure to back up before making changes, in case you don't like the results. I noticed some concerns posted online about the demo, however, I've had no problems (but I paid for the software before using it).