How to export & import contacts between Outlook and Gmail

Part 1: Export contacts from Outlook

The fastest way to export Outlook contacts is by using the inbuilt wizard that will walk you through the process:

1. In your Outlook desktop app, click File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
   
2. Choose Export to a file and click Next.
   
3. Select Comma Separate Values and click Next.
   
4. Scroll up or down to the target account/mailbox, select the Contacts folder and click Next.
   
5. Click the Browse button, then select the destination folder, name your .csv file, and click Next.
   

   Note. If you've exported your Outlook contacts before, the previous location and file name will appear automatically. If you don't want to replace an existing file, be sure to give your CSV file a different name.

6. Click Finish and Outlook will start exporting your contacts immediately.
   

   Tip. If you want to control what information is saved to the CSV file, click the Map Custom Fields button, and do manual mapping.

To make sure that Outlook has successfully exported all of your contacts, open the newly created CSV file in Excel to view the information.

Part 2: Import Outlook contacts to Gmail

To import your Outlook contacts into Gmail, this is what you need to do:

1. Log in to your Google Gmail account.
2. At the upper-right corner of the page, click the Google apps icon, and then click Contacts. Or go directly to your Google Contacts.
   
3. On the left, under Contacts, click Import.
   
4. In the Import contacts dialog window, click Select file and choose the CSV file you've exported from Outlook.
   
5. Click the Import button.
   

   As soon as the import is completed, the All done notification will appear at the bottom-right corner of the page. If you've inadvertently imported a wrong list of contacts, just click Undo.
   

Part 1: Export Gmail contacts

1. Go to your Google Contacts.
2. On the left, under Contacts, click Export.
   
3. In the Export contacts window that pops-up, select Outlook CSV and click Export. This is the key step that will copy your Google contacts to a .csv file in the format required by Outlook, so no further adjustments will be needed.
   
4. Depending on your browser, you will either be prompted to open the file in Excel or just see the downloaded contacts.csv file at the button of the page. After opening the file, review the info, make changes if needed (but do not change the column headers!), and then save the CSV file to any folder on your PC or to a cloud storage.

Part 2: Import Gmail contacts into Outlook

To import your Google contacts to Outlook, perform these steps:

1. In Microsoft Outlook, click File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
   
2. In the first step of the Import and Export wizard, choose Import from another program or file and click Next.
   
3. Choose Comma Separated Values and click Next.
   
4. Click the Browse button and select the CSV file you've exported from Gmail. Then, choose how to deal with possible duplicate contacts (the screenshot below shows the default option), and click Next.
   
5. Under the account into which you want to import Gmail contacts, select the Contacts folder and click Next.
   
6. Click Finish.
   

   Tip. To make sure that all the columns in your CSV file are correctly mapped to the Outlook contact fields, click Map Custom Fields.

Outlook starts importing your Google contacts immediately. When the progress box is gone, the import is finished. To view the imported contacts, click the People icon on the Navigation bar.