Making the jump from your traditional desktop email client, like Microsoft Outlook, into a webmail based system, like Google Gmail, is not without it’s challenges. One such point of difficulty is how best to go about migrating your address book you’ve collected over the years from Outlook into your fresh and clean Gmail Contacts list.
Thankfully the process is rather straightforward as Outlook is able to export your contacts in a CSV file which can then be used to import the information into Gmail. Here’s how!
Exporting Outlook Contacts
Within Outlook, from the toolbar click File -> Import and Export.
Click Export to a file, and then Next.
Click Comma Separated Values (Windows), and then click Next.
In the folder list, select the Contacts folder, and then click Next.
Browse to the folder where you want to save the contacts as a .csv file and name the file appropriately. Click Next.
Click Finish to initiate the export.
Importing Contacts into Gmail
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 Outlook will take precedence!
