Zen computing: simplify with gmail. part 7 of 20

Tip 7: Add your big huge list of Contacts.

Here's where Gmail continues to take over ground that was once only the purview of a program like Outlook or Lotus Notes.

It's now time to add your list of contacts from one of these programs, and thus create a centralized database of your contacts that will never be far from reach ever again.


You'll need to compete two relatively simple tasks to carry this out:

First, create a Comma Separated Values file from your current list of contacts. From Outlook, you'll follow these steps:

1. In Outlook choose the File menu, then Import and Export.
2. Click Export to a file, click Next, and choose Comma Separated Values (Windows), and click Next.
3. You now see a list of Outlook folders. From here, choose the Contacts folder you want to export and click Next. (Or ,maybe even a folder you've specifically created for this operation - maybe you don't want all your Outlook contacts to be exported, and are using this to purge some old stuff.)
   
4. Now choose the location where you want to save the contacts, type a name for the .csv file, and then click OK.
5. Click Next and then Finish.

That's it for the first stage. For the second stage, you will import that CSV file into the Gmail contacts list. Follow these steps as mentioned on the gmail support pages on this topic:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Contacts (located below your list of views) on any Gmail page.
3. Click Import in the top portion of the Contact Manager.
4. Click the Browse... or Choose File button and locate the CSV file you'd like to upload.
5. Select the file and click the Import button.

Once you've successfully uploaded the document, Gmail will display the number of contacts imported.

Now you have every you ever contacted in Outlook ready and waiting for an email using your new Gmail account. To locate a contact, just Compose an Email and start typing their name in the To: section. Any matches are shown immediately from your My Contacts list.

And even better, you can sync all these Gmail contacts to your phone. That's covered in the next posting. Be sure to Subscribe to get the update as soon as it posts.