Bento is a great application for everything from tracking client info to conducting jury selection/voir dire. But, when is an update/upgrade not an upgrade? The new Bento iPad is a significant upgrade over the prior version. To get the improved iPad version and still sync data with your Mac, you need to update the desktop version of Bento. However, doing so eliminates the connection between desktop Bento and the Contacts app under Mountain Lion. Here’s how to keep syncing Contacts with Bento all the way around.

Bento – 4.1x – Address Book, Contacts and Sync

When syncing with iPad for the first time, the latest update to Bento tells you that “Your Bento Address Book library did not sync with your iPad. To sync this data with your iPad, you must migrate your Bento Address Book library to a new Bento Contacts library. This new Bento Contacts library will not be linked to your Mac OS X Address Book. This cannot be undone.”

An ominous sounding warning and one which drove me from ‘migrating’ my Bento address book on my Mac. Bento is a handy address book editor… it can be used to edit a good deal of Address Book (now “Contacts” under Mountain Lion) in short order. Bento can slice and dice Contacts in a powerful manner with sorts, fields filter etc. Losing this ability in order to sync Contacts with iPad is inexplicable but may have something to do with the impending sandboxing. Here’s the trick to reject this migration, maintain an ability to edit Contacts in Mac Bento, and have everything sync to your iPad.

• First of all, don’t migrate. It cannot be undone to my knowledge.
• Second of all, reject the offer to migrate and hit the “Don’t show this again” checkbox.
• Third, on your iPad, add a new library, choose Contacts, and choose “Sync Address Book contacts.”

The net effect of this approach forces Bento iPad to pull your contacts info from your iOS Contacts database. But, Bento for Mac still syncs directly with Contacts on the Mac. So, any changes made to the Contacts on the Mac go up to iCloud, down to your iOS device and across to Bento. It’s unclear if this will continue to work down the road and YMMV. It’s deplorable that Filemaker and Apple cannot reconcile this issue in a less convoluted manner. Bento 4.1.x on the Mac actually has less functionality as a result of an ‘update.’