Import A Thunderbird Address Book Into Gmail Contacts

We have just shown you how to import Gmail contacts into Thunderbird and would like to continue this little article series with instructions on how to import a Thunderbird address book into Gmail Contacts. The restrictions and benefits of this approach remain the same as in the last article. The main benefit is that no third party software is involved in the process, the disadvantage that it will only import the current address book information meaning that the process might have to be repeated at a later time.

Importing a Thunderbird address book into Gmail Contacts reverses the process of the last article.

It begins by opening the Thunderbird email client and selecting Tools > Address Book from the top menu. Now select one of the available address books from the left sidebar and click again on Tools and then Export to open the file browser to save the contact information.

Make sure you save the contacts in a comma separated file by selecting that file type from the list of available formats (default is LDIF).

Now head over to the Gmail website and log into your account. Click on the Contacts link in the left menu and then on import to open the import window.

Click browse to open the file browser that lets you pick the csv file from the computer. You may also want to check “Also add these imported contacts to” to import the contacts into a new group or existing group.

Gmail will process the contacts file and display the results of the operation in the next screen. If everything worked well all Thunderbird contact information have been imported into Gmail.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Sunday May 2, 2010 -
Tags:gmail, import contacts, import gmail contacts, thunderbird, thunderbird address book