Sync Contacts from Phone to Gmail

[Guest Weirdo109]

My friend has just upgraded to a HTC Desire and as I have a pulse I explained he could sync his contacts with a gmail account.

His contacts were on his sim I converted them to the phones memory.

Then he set up a googlemail account but it won't sync the contacts on his phone.

I created a contact in his gmail account and it synced that.

Is there a method to get the ones from the phone to the gmail account without having to retype them.

:-)

[Guest irishandrew]

My friend has just upgraded to a HTC Desire and as I have a pulse I explained he could sync his contacts with a gmail account.

His contacts were on his sim I converted them to the phones memory.

Then he set up a googlemail account but it won't sync the contacts on his phone.

I created a contact in his gmail account and it synced that.

Is there a method to get the ones from the phone to the gmail account without having to retype them.

:-)

Hi,

I believe this is a known issue with the sense people app - when you create a new contact you need to save it as a "google" contact, not a phone contact, in order for it to sync. Unfortunately as far as I can see there is no way to change the contact type on an existing contact.

The simplest method I can suggest is to use HTC Sync to get the contacts onto your friends computer - from there export them (from the PIM software - i.e. Outlook) as a CSV file, then open up Gmail, click on the Contacts link in the left pane, then on the "Import" link in the upper right. From there choose the CSV file and it will import the contacts to the google account and from there sync down to your friends phone.

Although I haven't tried it with the latest HTC Sync, I know that it wouldn't sync up with Outlook 2010 beta or tech preview. Certainly I spent a very long day making my Gmail contacts list actually useable when I first got a Hero!

Hope this helps,

-andrew.

Edited April 21, 2010 by irishandrew

[Guest Weirdo109]

Seems mad to me that such a simple thing is so difficult.

We have tried for a while now but have given up I told him it would probably just be as easy to sit and type them into gmail and them remove from phone as he does each one.

You idea would work but he's not very PC savvy and i'm really busy at the mo so can't spend to long sorting it.

I did not that you can export contacts on the phonoe to vcard format but it only allows each one to be done individually.

Thanks again, I'll leave it for him to sort now.

[Guest irishandrew]

Seems mad to me that such a simple thing is so difficult.

We have tried for a while now but have given up I told him it would probably just be as easy to sit and type them into gmail and them remove from phone as he does each one.

You idea would work but he's not very PC savvy and i'm really busy at the mo so can't spend to long sorting it.

I did not that you can export contacts on the phonoe to vcard format but it only allows each one to be done individually.

Thanks again, I'll leave it for him to sort now.

Yeah, I knew that the vCards from the phone were a one by one thing- figured outlining a batch process with Sync would be faster.

I have just found something on the market which looks promising - "ExportContacts" - let me try it... Yep, just successfully exported my contacts to a file called exportcontacts.csv on the SD card in a matter of seconds. This could easily be imported into gmail then. He will undoubtedly need to do some tidying up afterwards, but seems like the fastest option. Presume he is tech savvy enough to open the desire as a disk via the cable to upload the file into gmail?

Cheers,

Andrew.

[Guest Weirdo109]

Yeah, I knew that the vCards from the phone were a one by one thing- figured outlining a batch process with Sync would be faster.

I have just found something on the market which looks promising - "ExportContacts" - let me try it... Yep, just successfully exported my contacts to a file called exportcontacts.csv on the SD card in a matter of seconds. This could easily be imported into gmail then. He will undoubtedly need to do some tidying up afterwards, but seems like the fastest option. Presume he is tech savvy enough to open the desire as a disk via the cable to upload the file into gmail?

Cheers,

Andrew.

Thanks for still looking andrew

I told him and he went to the marketplace and it now seems tmobile lock out the marketplace on new phones as he has had to ring up and get it unlocked and it can take upto 24hrs.

Phone was a contract upgrade so you would have thought they would know his age.

Fingers crossed we'll get there.

Thanks again.

Regards

Ricky

[Guest Weirdo109]

Exportcontacts again will only export the contact that was created on the phone or under gmail on the web. it won't bring any that were created on the phone from the sim.

[Guest mr-maw]

I found a simple way of copying the Phone contacts to Google contacts on HTC Desire:

1. Go to People app and select Import/Export from the menu

2. Export to SD card from Phone contacts

3. Open Import/Export again. Import from SD card to Google contacts

Done - you should now see the contacts at http://contacts.google.com

You can also change the view so that Phone contacts are not shown - or just delete them.

[Guest Mr Lau]

I found a simple way of copying the Phone contacts to Google contacts on HTC Desire:

1. Go to People app and select Import/Export from the menu

2. Export to SD card from Phone contacts

3. Open Import/Export again. Import from SD card to Google contacts

Done - you should now see the contacts at http://contacts.google.com

You can also change the view so that Phone contacts are not shown - or just delete them.

So much win there... thanks dude! It still amazes me how unintuitive this is! Cmon Google, sort it out!