It wasn’t long ago that the webmail interface was viewed as merely a convenient way to access your email – being able to get to your email from any device with an Internet connection was obviously pretty powerful. However, the webmail platform’s power wasn’t remotely comparable to the traditional desktop email client like Outlook, Thunderbird, or even Eudora. A lot has changed over the years however, and it started around the time Google rolled out Gmail.

Today, webmail, and specifically the Gmail platform, are more than enough to over-throw even the most die-hard desktop client users. If you’re ready to make the jump one of the first questions is how to migrate your email and contacts across. Google has a facility to address both situations – today let’s talk about moving your contacts out of Thunderbird and into Gmail.

From within Thunderbird, select the Address Book you wish to export.

Click Tools -> Export. Very important: Change the file type to be Comma Separated. Thunderbird defaults to LDIF type.

Now, log on to Gmail, and then click Contacts from the left navigation panel on the page.

Locate and click Import.

Use Choose File to navigate to the export .csv file created above. You have the option to import the contacts into a new group by selecting the check-box.

Click Import and wait will the process completes – you’ll be redirected to a screen showing the results of the process. The imported contacts should now appear in your My Contacts group if you did not choose a new group from above. If an existing contact already existed in Gmail, the information from Thunderbird will take precedence!