My love-hate relationship with GMail contacts

December 4th, 2008 17:36 UTC ·

As I’ve mentioned, I recently started using the T-Mobile / Google G1, which meant populating my GMail contacts. (I have had a GMail account for years, because it was required to use iGoogle, but don’t use it for my email.) Upon clicking “Import,” one sees the following message:

We support importing contacts in the CSV file format (Comma Separated Values). For best results, please use a CSV file produced by Outlook, Outlook Express, Yahoo!, or Hotmail. For Apple Address Book, there is a useful utility called “A to G”.

I use Outlook 2003, so this should be easy, right? (Yeah, I’m a sucker.)

I willingly admit that Outlook’s data format is, well, interesting. “Carphone?” “Telex?” A “home address” field that gets auto-populated without the postal code? But Google says, in effect, “We can handle it.” And, all in all, the first import a few weeks ago wasn’t totally awful, even though it took 3-4 efforts to import 400 or so contacts.

But over the last few weeks, we’ve gone through our annual holiday-related contacts comb-through to make sure that party invitations and Christmas cards get to the right address. By the time we were done, my contacts file was at 560 or so, with a lot of changes.

So I decided to delete all my Google contacts and re-import.

In the intervening time, Google’s done something with their import routine – something very, very bad.

Complete, unadulterated, total FAIL. Several times.

So, in desperation, I exported Google’s contacts to see just what was happening. Every bit of data except for Outlook’s “E-Mail Display Name” – addresses, phone numbers, emails – was being shunted into the “Notes” field.

Fine. I’ll reformat my contacts to fit Google’s structure and upload THAT. That should work, right?

WRONG. Granted, it was only partial FAIL, but every physical address was ignored, lots of emails and phone numbers missing, etc.

So, mine dear friends at the GMail team, a few recommendations:

If you say you’re going to import and Outlook CSV, do it. The format may be antiquated, but it’s pretty easy to understand.
Give me an option of how I want the contacts listed and sorted. When everyone is “Mr. Abe Lincoln” or “Ms. Mary Todd,” alphabatizing is useless. (And what’s wrong with separate first name and last name fields?)
Yes, I KNOW physical addresses aren’t all that important to you, but I want them on my phone. Windows Mobile and PalmOS can do it, why can’t Google Contacts? And use the individual columns, not the “home address” field (which even Outlook ignores).
When I use YOUR data column headings, and you don’t import my data, you have an even bigger problem.

The G1 is a good phone, and GMail is a good service. But GMail contacts is awful, and if you want the G1 to be a success it’s time to overhaul it and make it work right. Don’t reinvent the wheel – adopt Outlook’s column format, and make Google Contacts as useful as Outlook is.

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1 GMail Contacts again // Jul 2, 2009 at 12:17 pm

[...] months back, I went Gildas on GMail’s contacts ‘functionality.’ It’s only fair that I acknowledge that [...]

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"Pete, it's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." – U. E. McGill