Merge your Outlook and Gmail contacts

I spend most of my workday Alt-Tabbing between my Gmail inbox and the Outlook account on my employer's Exchange Server. The problem is, when it comes to contacts, there isn't much overlap between the two: Only a handful of Gmail addresses are also in the Outlook contacts list, and vice-versa.

Rectifying the situation takes only a few minutes. Start by moving your Outlook contacts to Gmail. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click File > Import and Export, select "Export to a file," click Next, choose either comma-separated value option, and click Next again. Browse to and select your Contacts folder, click Next again, choose the Browse button, pick a location for the file, give it a name with the .csv extension, click OK, and click Next once more. Verify the action and click Finish.

Verify the export action to move Outlook contacts to Gmail.

(Credit: Microsoft)

After the file-export finishes (it can take a while), open Gmail, click Contacts on the left, and choose Import at the top right. Click Browse and navigate to and select the file you just exported. You can create a new group for the contacts by choosing "Also add these imported contacts to" before you click Import. You'll be prompted to give the group a name.

Select the .csv file you exported from Outlook to import your contacts to Gmail.

(Credit: Google)

Once the file is imported, you'll see a summary indicating the number of contacts added, merged, or ignored because they were duplicates. Click OK to return to your list of contacts.

Gmail shows a summary of the contacts imported from Outlook.

(Credit: Google)

Now turn the process around by moving your Gmail contacts to Outlook. On the Gmail Contacts page, click Export in the top right, choose to export just your contacts or your contacts and Gmail's suggested contacts, select "Outlook's CSV format (for importing into Outlook or other applications)," and click the Export button.

The file is named "contacts.csv" automatically. Select the Save File button (it's chosen by default) and click OK. The list will be saved in your Downloads folder (or whichever folder you've picked as your default). Open Outlook, click File > Import and Export > Import from another program or file > Next.

Choose the appropriate comma-separated-value option and click Next again. Click the Browse button, navigate to and select the .csv file you just created, pick one of the options regarding duplicate entries (the default is "Allow duplicates to be created"), and click Next again. Choose the destination folder (probably Contacts under Personal Folders for your account), verify the action, and click Finish.

Any addresses with unrecognizable names will be listed first with only the e-mail address, but other contacts will appear alphabetically by last name.

[kagbeni94]

Unless GMail has been updated you are limited to the number of contacts you can import at any one time. I can't remember what that number is, but I tried doing this a couple of years ago - I have 2500+ contacts in Outlook - and kept running into problems. I had to break up my Outlook contacts into smaller groups of 500. I would love to hear if this has been modified as I face this quandry as well.

[kstedford]

I have a gmail acct but only use it when I need it for google things. Does gmail still not have a sync program like yahoo? In yahoo you can manually sync whenever you want or you can have outlook and yahoo stay synced automatically behind the scenes - any change in either one automatically syncs and changes the other

[kstedford]

oops - hit submit before I meant to. yahoo calendar and outlook calendar can also stay synced automatically behind the scenes. does gmail's calendar sync with outlook?

[Reuben257]

There is a google sync that you can get, but the I have not found a way to automatically sync contacts.

[paul613]

On Windows Mobile, it's easy: I use Oggsync: http://oggsync.com/ . It's major competitor is goosync: http://www.goosync.com/

[imkeefer]

Oggsync (free) with exchange and google calendar is seemless. You are doing way too much work.

[kstedford]

I notice thast goosync is compatible with iPhone which I use but could not find info regarding oggsync's compatibility with iPhone. I am able to keep personal outlook, company #1 exchange outlook, company #2 exchange outlook (I am a consultant), yahoo, and my iPhone all in sync (automatically behind the scenes) would this be possible with either of these programs? I use yahoo as my main email because of this but get alot of spam (have had the yahoo account since yahoo's inception) so am considering changing but each time I've tried gmail, it just didn't do all the things I've come to rely on with yahoo.

[iwarrior-poet]

What they really need to create is a way of SYNCING google contacts with Outlook contacts---not just exporting/importing.

[alanbcohen]

The problem is building a sync between Outlook and Gmail leaves out those other users - Thunderbird, sendmail, versamail, outlook express, etc. Import and Export of a CSV file is platform and application independent, if a little more work.

[Nicole_Simon]

Instead of just pushing them blindly from one site to the other and having to deal with doubles and tripples over and over again, you might want to add a step and work with labels to identify new / changed information. Also a step through Excel to remove information might be in place to insure that not everything lands in the hand of Google but only the information you need. Once set up properly, this is a short amount of work and mostly automated.

[zdota1]

The problem with exporting contacts from Outlook into Gmail is they don't map correctly. Addresses don't end up in address flds, but get put into the note flds. A sync utility like Google has developed for Google Calendar and Outlook would be great. Alternatively, Google should improve the import capability by providing a field mapping utility or at least publish the Gmail contact field names so CSV files can be properly edited to match Outlook field names to Gmail contact field names. This is an extreme annoyance for something that should work seamlessly.

[brettbum]

gmail's field structure is really poor. You can import files in, but expect a lot of important data to be dropped, like city, state, zip from a business address, or watch everything get consolidated into a single gmail notes field.

gmail earns fail on this one, freshman attempt, freshman failure.

[lschilling]

why all the hastle with snapshot "sync's" when there are real-time consolidation tools like Cemaphore's "Mailshadow for Google Apps"? Take a look at www.cemaphore.com.

[legend2k]

very usefull.
it's since you can sync you outlook contacts with the iPhone, this saves alot of frustrations.
thank you.

[patspumi]

Why all of the bother? If using Outlook 2007, just add your Gmail account to your accounts. Then, when you send an email, just choose "Account" under the "Send" button and pick your gmail account. A message will appear above the Send button stating that "This message will be sent via [e-mail]. Of course this won't work if you are using a computer other than the one on which you have your Ourlook 2007, but how often does this occur?

[tws0331]

You really should take a hard look at MailShadow for Google Apps. It does realtime seamless syncing of email, calendars and contacts. No convoluted file transfers or manual intervention of any kind. You can install the product and be up and running in 5 mins.

I've been using it for a month and its fast and works in the background. It has some glitches, but it's beta and Cemaphore is posting updates/fixes. I don't have to worry about scheduling or importing exporting the correct files. A really cool feature is if my Exchange goes down, I can continue to send mail via my Gmail account, and when Exchange comes back up, it's all logged and accounted for. The other plus is that I have access to all of my Gmail data even when I'm not connected to the web.

I downloaded a beta at www.cemaphore.com. I think this version requires Exchange, but I understand they'll be coming out with a non-Exchange version soon.

[locvnguyen1960]

hi i dont know why not is is dosent work this you check for me thank

[arbitraryperson]

Try this, much easier http://www.goloia.com/SynContact/SynContact.aspx

[mandyalexander08]

Thank you for this information.

[ccena88]

only way i got mine to work was in the option in outlook to customize the mapping...and i only selected the name the mobile phone email and primary phone...after the sync all my contacts appared with the name and number

[ewilts]

I use the commercial product CompanionLink. and it cost me like $25. So far, it's been doing a pretty decent job. It's bi-directional although I'm currently using it in unidirectional mode to go from Outlook 2003 to Gmail to my G1.