Workers' Edge

Last February, I described losing half my iPhone contacts after an iTunes sync. Even though I tried the Filadex Web-based contact manager, I don't like the fact that the information is stored unencrypted on Web servers.

More importantly, my iPhone always has my most up-to-date telephone and address contact list, while Gmail knows more about my e-mail correspondents than the iPhone does, and Google Calendar is my primary scheduler. Just to complicate matters, I spend most of my workdays (and some weekends, unfortunately) in Outlook.

I need to export my Google Calendar and Gmail addresses to Outlook and my iPhone, and move my iPhone telephone numbers and physical addresses to Gmail and Outlook. Simple, right? Well, it turned out to be not too difficult or time-consuming, although the result was a bit messy.

Sync Google Calendar with calendars in Outlook and the iPhone
Who knew Google Calendar and Outlook could play so nice? The aptly named Google Calendar Sync does the trick with just a few clicks and a minimum of thumb-twiddling. The program works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 on XP and Vista PCs, though it doesn't support 64-bit XP, according to Google.

After you download and install the program, you enter your Google ID and password and choose one of three options: sync from and to Google Calendar and Outlook; sync from Google Calendar to Outlook; or sync from Outlook to Google Calendar. The default sync time is 120 minutes, and the minimum setting is 10 minutes; there's no mention of a maximum setting. The sync begins after you click Save.

Choose two-way or one-way sync between Outlook and Google Calendar in the Google Calendar Sync utility.

(Credit: Google)

Up-and-down arrows on the Google Calendar icon in the notification area indicate a sync in progress; hover over it to see the percent complete or the time of the last sync.

The program converted my relatively simple Google Calendar to Outlook 2007 with surprising accuracy. In fact, the two calendars appeared and acted very much alike. Keep in mind, I didn't transfer any tricky repeating appointments, invitations, or time-zone changes. But for my meager calendar needs, the sync was fast and comprehensive.

To sync your Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with an iPhone, simply use the phone to create a Google Sync account. Instructions for OS version 2.2 and 3.0 are on the Google Mobile Help site.

Unfortunately, Google Sync is limited in the fields it supports and doesn't let you exclude entries or deal with duplicates. These and other of the program's limitations are described on the Google Sync Help page.

Move your iPhone contacts to Gmail and Outlook, or vice-versa
Use iTunes to export your iPhone contacts to Outlook--and Gmail, if you choose not to go the Google Sync route described above. Plug your iPhone into your PC, choose the device in iTunes' left pane, and select the Info tab. Pick either Outlook or Google Contacts in the "Sync contacts from" drop-down menu. (Yahoo Address Book and Windows Address Book are the other options.) For Outlook, you can choose which groups to sync. For Gmail, you enter your user ID and password.

Your only sync options are to merge or replace the entries iTunes identifies as duplicates, and to choose between two entries pegged as conflicts. The resulting sync was full of double entries, but I would much rather deal with manually merging the dupes than losing the information either entry contains.

iTunes' sync with Google Contacts provides few options for dealing with duplicate entries.

(Credit: Apple)

I'll probably spend another hour or so cleaning up the extra entries created by the contact sync, but that's much less time than I'd spend trying to replace the info.

I spent a good part of the last week searching for a simple, free, and safe place to store my contacts online. Well, two out of three ain't bad.

The last time I synched my iPhone, iTunes offered to sync my contacts as well. I clicked OK without thinking. Before I knew it, I had lost about half of my phone's contact entries.

Backup? What backup? The entries in my Outlook and Gmail contacts were woefully outdated, compared to the contact information I stored in my iPhone. I had no choice but to reassemble the lost data phone number by phone number, address by address.

That was a good two weeks ago, and I'm still restoring the lost data. I vowed that this wouldn't happen again. What I needed was the online version of an old-fashioned paper address book.

What I didn't need was a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM) application, but those were all I found at first. I tried WebAsyst, Keepm, and BigContacts, but all three were overkill for my meager needs. (None of the three was able to manage the simple trick of importing my Gmail or Outlook contacts with anything approaching accuracy, either.)

I was about to bail on the whole project when I decided to try Flexadex, a Web-based application that gets your contact information online in a blink. The only fly in the ointment is that the service doesn't use Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, so all those addresses and phone numbers are flying over the Net unencrypted.

What really bugs me is that I wouldn't need a separate online address book if either Gmail or Outlook offered the meager contact management features I need. Have you ever tried editing your contacts in Gmail? Whenever I try, clicking the Edit button opens some entry other than the one I'm trying to change. Just getting all the names in "lastname, firstname" format is impossible.

Editing Outlook contacts is more straightforward, but the entries in your Outlook address book don't travel well. Outlook doesn't let you export to a file in the VCard format (.vcf). And none of the three full-size online contact managers I tried was able to import Outlook contacts without skipping or screwing up much of the information.

I followed the steps described in this Worker's Edge post from last August to move my contacts from Outlook to Gmail. Then I used Gmail's contact export function to create a VCard file I could import to Flexadex. As you can imagine, the result was less than perfect.

Fortunately, editing the entries in Flexadex is quick and simple. Just double-click a name to open its record, which consists of two text fields: Title and Contents. You can also send e-mail from the service, or e-mail a record using your own e-mail client.

Flexadex address book entries are comprised of two text fields: Title and Contents.

(Credit: Flexadex)

There's a big, big problem for anyone hoping to use this service for business. Your data isn't encrypted, so don't even think about uploading any information you wouldn't want to share with your competitors. In fact, I'm not comfortable storing the addresses and phone numbers of family and friends on the service until it adds SSL support.

If you're looking for an easy-to-use, free online address book--and you don't mind the lack of encryption--Flexadex might fit the bill.

You can't expect any application as complicated and full-featured as Microsoft Outlook to suit you perfectly right out of the box. Here are the Outlook adjustments I rely on to make the program safer and easier to use.

Send and receive mail in plain text
In a previous post, I described how to make sure Outlook shows all incoming mail as plain text. Quick recap: in Outlook 2003, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options, and in the Message Handling area, check "Read all standard mail in plain text." To do the same in Outlook 2007, click Tools > Trust Center > E-mail Security (in the left pane) and check "Read all standard mail in plain text" under Read as Plain Text.

But what about the mail you send? Keep things simple for the recipients of your messages by sending them without the fancy--and usually unnecessary--HTML formatting. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click Tools > Options and choose the Mail Format tab. In Outlook 2003, click Plain Text under "Send in this Format." In Outlook 2007, choose Plain Text in the drop-down menu in the "Message format" area.

Send mail in plain-text format by default by choosing this option in Outlook 2007.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Turn off new-mail pop-up windows
Some people want to know the moment a new message has arrived in their Outlook inbox. For me, the alerts that Outlook pops out of the system tray whenever a message comes in are distractions, plain and simple.

To quash the alerts, you can just click the Disable New Mail Message Alert option on the menu that appears when you click the down arrow in the top-right corner of the alert itself. Or if you'd rather not wait for the next alert to block alerts, click Tools > Options > Preferences > E-mail Options > Advanced E-mail Options. Uncheck "Display a New Mail Message Alert (default Inbox only)" and click OK three times.

Keep new-mail alerts from popping out of your system tray by unchecking this option in Outlook's Advanced E-mail Options dialog box.

(Credit: Microsoft)

See more of your inbox by disabling the Reading Pane
I tend to keep a lot of mail in my inbox--like, 301 messages, last time I checked. That's why I like to enlarge Outlook's Inbox window at the expense of the To-Do Bar (just click the X in the top-right corner, or drag it to the right to minimize it but keep it in view) and the Reading Pane (click View > Reading Pane > Off).

Another option for opening Outlook with the Reading Pane disabled is to add the switch "/nopreview" to the file path in the shortcut you use to open the program. Right-click the shortcut, choose Properties, and make the change to the path in the Target field under the Shortcut tab. For example, your file path may read like this:
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE /recycle /nopreview".

Roll your own Contacts view
Outlook gives you plenty of ways to view your contact information, but none of the choices was just right for me. So I created a custom view that shows only the fields I want to see, in the order I want to see them.

To customize the look of your Contacts window, click View > Current View > Define Views > New. Give your view a name, choose a format, decide whether you want the view to be available to every user on the machine, and click OK. Next, click the Fields button in the Customize View dialog box, add or remove fields as you see fit, click OK twice, and select Apply View.

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.