After many articles and many varations of the same steps i finally got the user profile service to sync.
One problem though when a user clicked on alert me it would throw an error that there wasnt an email address. Going to user profile services and clicking manage user the email was clearly there.
here are the steps and links to articles i found that solved my issues.
This is the article where I found a sou lotion that worked for me.
To simplify
launch Sharepoint powershell
stsadm -o sync -listolddatabases 0
this showed 2 databases had been synced 30 mins ago.
stsadm -o sync -deleteolddatabases 0
this deleted the databases
Open Central Admin ->Monitoring->Review Job Definations.
Mine was on page 2.
User Profile to sharepoint full synchronization
cick it and choose run now.
Job took only a few mins for 900 profiles.
Logged in under my test user clicked my settings and email is now visible.
Testing by click alert me and email is now populated.
I hope this helps anyone out there looking for a fix for this.
I only wish i documented my steps on setting up user profile services. It took me 2 full days of researching and trying various things before it started working.
