How to Transfer Gmail Contacts

By
Santiago
2012-03-26
Gmail Contacts

Migrating Google Contacts is easy. You just export them from your old account and import them into your new account. See the steps below:Exporting Contacts to a CSV File

  1. Sign in to your Gmail account.
  2. Click Contacts (located in the drop-down above the Compose Mail button)
  3. Go to the More actions drop-down menu and select Export.
  4. Choose whether to export all contacts or only one group.
  5. Select the format in which you'd like to export your contacts' information. Please note, some of these formats can lose some contact information.
  6. To transfer contacts between Google accounts, use the Google CSV format. This is the recommended way to back up your Google Contacts.
  7. To transfer contacts to Outlook, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, or various other apps, use the Outlook CSV format.
  8. To transfer contacts to Apple Address Book, use the vCard format.
  9. Click Export.
  10. Choose Save to Disk then click OK.
  11. Select a location to save your file, and click OK.

Depending on the requirements of the program to which you're exporting your contacts from Gmail, you can easily edit the file to fit your needs.Importing Contacts using CSV FilesTo import Contacts into Gmail:

  1. Create a custom CSV file, or export the address book from your other webmail provider or email client as a CSV file.
  2. Sign in to your Gmail account.
  3. Click Contacts (located in the drop-down above the Compose Mail button)
  4. From the More actions dropdown menu, select Import.
  5. Click the Choose File button.
  6. Select the file you'd like to upload and click the Import button.

When it's complete Gmail will display the number of contacts imported. If you receive any error messages during the import, you might need to edit your CSV file.Note: These CSV files work with Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Eudora, and some other email providers. But the CSV files that these applications produce might not contain all of the supported contact fields. For example, when Outlook exports to a CSV file, it omits data including attachments, distribution lists, contact pictures, the "file as" field, the "nickname" field, and text formatting in the "notes" field. Google Contacts doesn’t have a way to know what was omitted, Google suggests that you manually copy over any important information in these fields after you import your contacts.For more information from Google, please see here.

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