by Svetlana Cheusheva, updated on
The tutorial shows how to export contacts from Outlook to Gmail and import Google contacts to Outlook step-by-step.
Switching between Microsoft Outlook and Google Gmail is a very common trend these days. Some people are migrating from a desktop-oriented Outlook app to a cloud-based Gmail while others are using different email clients for their personal and business communication. If you already have a bunch of contacts in one email app, you certainly wouldn't want to re-create them in the other app one by one. Luckily, both Outlook and Gmail make it possible to transfer all your contacts in one go. It's not a one-click operation, but we will comfortably guide you through all the steps.
To transfer your contacts from Outlook to Gmail, you will first need to export them from Microsoft Outlook as a CSV file, and then import that file to Google Gmail.
The fastest way to export Outlook contacts is by using the inbuilt wizard that will walk you through the process:
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.
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.
Tips and notes:
To import your Outlook contacts into Gmail, this is what you need to do:
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.
Note. For importing to complete correctly, your Gmail account must have the same language as was set in Outlook when exporting contacts. Otherwise, the column headings won't match and you'll get an error.
To transfer Google contacts to Outlook, first export your Gmail contacts to a CSV file, and then import that file into Microsoft Outlook.
To import your Google contacts to Outlook, perform these steps:
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.
That's how to import contacts from Outlook to Gmail and the other way round. That was pretty easy, wasn't it? I thank you for reading and hope to see you on our blog next week!
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