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Importing Gmail Contacts (and how to export Gmail contacts)

October 9th, 2009

Over a year ago I blogged about how to import your Google contacts into JibberJobber.  My team did a good job with the Gmail import, and I’ve used it …. once.

My biggest hangup was all of the imports I got without a first or last name.  It sucked to get a bunch of new contacts with no names … but those were contacts that were in my Gmail contact list.

On that old post Paul Miller suggested that you export your list to a CSV FIRST, and then import the CSV (instead of doing a straight dump from Gmail).  I totally agree but didn’t know where to find that until he wrote his post.  Here’s how you export your Gmail contacts:

  1. In Gmail, click on the Contacts link on the left side of your screen.
  2. On the right side you’ll see a link for EXPORT.
  3. On that page two of the options is to export to CSV format – I don’t care which format you use because both can be imported into JibberJobber.

OF COURSE, once you export you should delete all the junky contacts, and you should add additional fields to the CSV (like source, rank, notes, tags, etc.).

Thanks Paul, for nudging me to go find that :)

Posted in How To... | | | | 4 Comments »

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4 Responses to “Importing Gmail Contacts (and how to export Gmail contacts)”

  1. Anil Atluri Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 12:43 am

    Jason,

    I know there are a few out there who wouldn’t know gmail either, but this post from you was unexpected. Who would think Jason of Jibberjobber did not know how to import gmail contacts..tsk.tsk..:(

  2. Jason Alba Says:
    October 10th, 2009 at 11:23 am

    @Anil, yeah, yeah, I know :p One of the fallacies out there is that I am a great technologist … I’m actually a “slow adopter” … and I hate to poke around websites trying to learn new stuff… too busy doing other stuff and not interesting to me – and I haven’t really had a driving reason to dig down to figure that one out (as easy as it was :p).

  3. Denise Says:
    October 22nd, 2009 at 10:31 am

    I want to change my gmail username. I realize that I have to sign on for a new account. I want to transfer all my contacts, emails, folders, etc. to my new gmail account. I have searched everywhere and this is the closest thing I could find about gmail contacts. Is exporting & importing via CSV the easiest way to transfer contact info?

  4. Jason Alba Says:
    October 22nd, 2009 at 10:45 am

    Interesting – I have no idea but that sounds good – let me know if it works :)

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