With the first batch of T-Mobile G1 Android phones shipped to expectant first adopters all across the country, many Android fans are looking to Google to start managing their contacts. Since the G1 has built in sync capability with Gmail and other Google services, why not migrate your contacts completely over to Google’s system?
If you’ve given this a try yet, you’ve no doubt been introduced to the Gmail contacts double whammy. First, if you upload a CSV contact file extracted from Outlook, you may have noticed that the Name fields come out muddled when you try to import it into Google. This proves truly obnoxious to anyone with a large address book. The second problem is that Google adds anyone that you email to your contacts list, adding anything from acquaintances to customer service lines as valid contacts in your library.
So your choices are to either sync to a service such as Funambol, or modify your CSV file from Outlook to use Gmail’s CSV format.
Guide to importing contacts into Gmail from CSV
- Export your contacts from your Email client such as Outlook or Entourage to a CSV file.
- In Outlook you can go into your contacts and select ‘File,’ ‘Import and Export,’ then ‘Export to CSV.’
- Save this file to your desktop and open it in Outlook.
- Next download our handy Gmail CSV Template
- Copy and paste the data from your contacts into the proper columns in the Gmail CSV Template and save it.
- Now log into Gmail, click on ‘Contacts’ in the left hand navigation. Click on Import in the top right corner.
Now your contacts will be in Gmail and should have all the relevant fields. You’ll still have to deal with any random contacts that Gmail has automatically added in the past, but after that it’s smooth sailing.
Update 10/29:
Here’s an updated version of the CSV file that includes virtually every field you should ever need. Get it here.
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[...] page - because there is no export feature. With a little ruby I parse the file into Gmail’s CSV format and import the file via the Gmail contacts [...]
If you use Verizon and are stuck with no way to export your contacts, I’ve written a little ruby script to generate a GMail formatted CSV of your Verizon contacts.
http://binaryelysium.com/blog/2008/10/23/exporting-contacts-from-verizon-to-gmail/
I used your template but needing more instructions.
Do you keep the “Section - 1″ in the header or replace it. When I add a phone number under Section - 1 Phone, I get an imported value of the phone number under “other”.
Can you help please ? I”ve been trying this and others for days.
Dave,
When I save my contacts as a CSV file I can not open it in Outlook but can open it in Excel. The first name and last name are in seperate columns. On your Gmail template the first and last name are both listed under “Name”. How do I get both the first and last name from 2 seperate fields copied into your single “Name” field?
Hi Chad,
You’ll want to export your contacts from outlook in CSV format and make the file look like this one in order for it to be loaded into Gmail correctly.
Once you open the CSV file in Excel, you can write a formula to combine the first and last name then paste them into the correct column in this spreadsheet.
First create a column in your Outlook Export for the combined fields. Then write a function that looks something like this:
=CONCATENATE(F1, ” “, L1)
F1 should be whatever field the first name is in and L1 should be whatever field the last name is in. The part in the middle with a space between the question marks will add a space between the two. Then you can copy this field and paste it down the rest of the column to perform the same function on the rest of your contacts. Now copy this entire column and then right click on the column in my template under the Name column and select ‘Paste Special’ then ‘Values’ and it should automate it for you.
Does that help?
Dave,
I found a concatenate formula to get the first and last name into one name field. However, when I import into Google it is not including anything except for the name and email address - no phone numbers, etc. I have copied an pasted all of the information. Any suggestions?
Thank you.
Chad,
Can you try the new file I just uploaded to help illustrate the fields? It’s a slight modification and should solve any missing IM accounts since the format is kind of weird.
If you can make your file look like this, it should work perfectly. I’m not sure if you’re having a problem with phone numbers too, but hopefully this will work.
[...] can also download our CSV template file and mangle the one you export from your contacts to look like [...]
[...] Manually adjust your contact CSV file after our template of Google’s format [...]
I agree with Chad… I put the information in the format you gave = nothing. Name and email address only. No phone numbers. Any suggestions?
Ok… follow up. I created a new contact inside of G-mail. Then I exported it. Then I changed the NAME only… and turned around an imported it back into G-mail.
I got the new name & the email address BUT NO PHONE NUMBERS!!!
Using their export file. I am very frustrated… anyone have a suggestion?
Dave,
Kudos to you for helping out us poor schleps. I’m going to give your template a try.
Do you have a translation table handy? Something that explains, for example, the difference between the plain ol’ “email” field and the “section 1 - Email” field?
For that matter, what is “section 1,” “section 2″ and “section 3″? These labels do not appear in Gmail contacts.
Many thanks for your work on this.
Nope. Didn’t work. Only the name and e-mail address fields imported. All other fields failed to import.
My list was importing only names and emails for all but one contact where it was importing everything. The only difference was The “Section 1 - Description” Column said “Personal”, I tried copying that into that field for all contacts and it worked, it imported everything. So if you’re using any of the section 1, 2, or 3 fields make sure the description column is not blank for that section.
Been trying to figure out this import/export problem and am totally confused by the “Section concept.
Can you explain what it is and how to use it?
Thns for the help…
You can get everything in there by following a few simple steps. (I just did this successfuly with 400+ contacts)
Start with a CSV of your contacts.
Import them into a hotmail account.
Export them back to CSV
Import into Google. (The hotmail formatting does the trick)
Tada!
Nope, doesn’t input the phone numbers.
Google’s contact import and MS Outlook are such crap! First Outlooks CSV header is different for different language versions of Outlook.
I had to change the header therefore I took an English header and translated the header thinking that would help, wrong! Google took things like “Mobile Phone” and put it into “Notes”, great Google, please fire the imbecil programmer. And for Outlook, we all know MS, stay away from MS products as far as possible.
Handy tool tips for editing your CSV (text) files; In MS Excel goto Data, text-to-collums, enter field separator, and be sure to select “Text” for all field-types (your phone numbers will be happy), UNIX tools; cut, paste, grep, sed, iconv (for converting between encodings iso, utf8 etc.), diff for quickly identifying screw-ups.
Outlook CSV header: http://www.earthlink.net/webmail/help/earthlink/en_US/import_help.html
Google is seriously f–ed up. Using the files here resulted in a few good uploads, later adding fields listed (Google’s own!) messed it up. Shame on you Google. I love the calendar… but who messed up the contact import?
I just had a detailed phone call with T-Mobile tech support with a G1 specialist and he said because of the limitations of Google Contacts that the G1 phone was not suitable for serious business use. I was complaining about not being able to sync web page URL fields or birthdays or anniversaries. The T-Mobile tech actually recommended that I get a Blackberry or a Windows Mobile smartphone and not the G1. I guess that clinches it. I’m actually coming from the Palm world so I’ll get a nice Palm organizer and a crummy cell phone and be done with all this smartphone malarkey.
Thanks the for guide csv. I used GMail to sync my phone numbers from my old phone to my G1. I had to use Nokia PC Suite (via Bluetooth), to sync to a clean Outlook Express profile, export from there and then edit the CSV in Excel. Then imported that into GMail and voila! Contacts in the G1.
I was having difficulty in getting the phone numbers to import as well. The trick is to put “PERSONAL” in the Description field on every line. Your phone numbers will then import as they should.
I’ve just spent the better part of two days trying to figure out what Google has done here, and while I have no idea why they did this, here is what I learned trying to import a CSV file of my contacts exported from Entourage into Google Contacts and have it allocate the data accurately so I could upload it to my iPhone and have the phone numbers show up in the phone fields rather than the Note field.
The list of fields are below at Note #1. But, in my experimentation to make this structure work, I found some strange and annoying quirks.
1) The two Description fields (Section 1 - Description, Section 2 - Description) must be populated with the word Personal (initial cap counts!) on each and every row if you want the data in the 10 fields that follow to be included in your Import. If you have no data in the Section 1 - Description field, then the data in that row following will not be imported AND the data in the fields following Section 2 - Description will be imported instead if the Section 2 - Description field is populated with Personal. If you put another word in, rather than Personal, the data will import, but each field in the row will be appended with that word. So, if you use the word Business, your data for the Google Contact for that row will be included, but renamed (i.e., (213) 555-1212 Business / mobile). As a result of this, when iPhone tries to upload this field, it will not be recognized as a phone number and will be left out or included in the Note section.
2) If you remove any fields (columns) from this format, Google will only look for and populate: name, email addresses and notes.
3) Most contacts CSV formats separate First Name and Last Name. Not Google’s. You have to concatenate (just learned this function) the two fields into one, first. (See above. Dave’s explanation above.)
4) If you are importing a lot of contacts (I have >2500), it takes Google a while to update the Contact Manager screen. Even though it says it’s done, there is nothing there. In my case, I figured 2500 was too much, so I tried importing again with a new CSV file with only 400 records. The import of the 400, five minutes later, was rejected because, it turns out, the 2500 were there all the time.
That’s what I learned so far. Good luck to everyone.
————————–
Note A:
Name, E-mail, Notes, Section 1 - Description, Section 1 - Email, Section 1 - IM, Section 1 - Phone, Section 1 - Mobile, Section 1 - Pager, Section 1 - Fax, Section 1 - Company, Section 1 - Title, Section 1 - Other, Section 1 - Address, Section 2 - Description, Section 2 - Email, Section 2 - IM, Section 2 - Phone, Section 2 - Mobile, Section 2 - Pager, Section 2 - Fax, Section 2 - Company, Section 2 - Title, Section 2 - Other, Section 2 - Address
Dave…
My Gmail contacts only contain Name and Email…I want to separate the “Name” into “First Name” and “Last Name” before or after exporting. Any ideas? Basically trying to do the reverse of what Chad was asking on 10.28.08.
Thanks!
-Chris