How to Import Contacts from Other E-mail Accounts into Gmail

Gmail, E-mail provided by Google, has become all the rage nowadays. Everyone is talking about its ease of use and its seemingly unlimited amount of space. But, there is one important thing to consider when setting up your Gmail account; you need to import your existing E-mail addresses from whatever email account you're using now.

Luckily, Gmail makes this pretty straightforward. All you need is a CVS (.cvs/comma delimited) file. You can create these by exporting your existing address book into a CVS file.

These files have fairly simple fields: name, E-mail address, etc. You can add additional fields like address and phone number, but Gmail may just throw this into the notes field. So, just name and E-mail address seems to be preferable.

In Outlook, you can export your address book by performing the following commands:

• Go to the Main Menu.
• Choose File > Import/Export > Export.
• Select Comma Separated Values > Select your Contacts.
• Save file as .cvs.

Outlook Express is very similar to the above method, but a tad easier.

• Go to the Main Menu.
• Select File > Export > Your Address Book.
• Select Text File/Comma Separated Values.
• Click Export.

To export from Yahoo!, you can import your address book and save it as a .cvs file. For additional help from Yahoo!, go to http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/ab/ab/ab_contacts5.html.

To export from your Hotmail account, you have several options. You can export your address book to Outlook Express by synchronizing the two, and then follow the above instructions. Or, you can simply cut and paste it into Excel.

To cut and paste it into Excel, follow these instructions for Internet Explorer.

• Go to your Hotmail account.
• Click on the Contacts tab.
• Select Print View.
• Start with the first letter of the Name column.
• Select the whole thing down to the last letter.
• Press the keyboard combination Ctrl + C.
• Open Excel.
• Select the A1 cell at the top.
• Press the keyboard combination Ctrl + V.
• Save as a .cvs file.

For Mozilla/Firefox, the process is similar, but instead of hitting Ctrl + V to paste it into Excel, you select Paste Special > Text > OK. For other providers, you may want to look at the specific instructions on exporting your address book. For example, you can't export your address book from AOL. You have to create your own CSV file.

But, if none of the above works for you, you may be stuck actually typing the name and addresses of your contacts into your Gmail address book or making a custom CSV file. While not completely horrible, it is the more time consuming option.