Switching my personal setup from Outlook to Gmail. 600 contacts need to make the trip.
What survives the move and what gets lost between the two systems?
Export Outlook contacts to Google Gmail
Solved Email & Outlook
RK
Rachel Kim July 30, 2019
2 replies
8,910 views
Reviewed by moderators
The move itself is CSV out of Outlook and into Google. Most fields survive, a few do not, details below.
1
In Outlook: File, Open and Export, Import/Export, Export to a file, Comma Separated Values, select the Contacts folder and save the CSV.
2
Open contacts.google.com, click Import in the left panel, choose the CSV and confirm.
3
Google files everything under an Imported label with the date. Review that label, then the contacts merge into your main list.
4
Run Google's built in Merge and fix afterwards, it catches duplicates against anything Gmail already auto saved from your mail history.
What carries over cleanly: names, every phone and email slot, postal addresses, company, job title and notes. What does not: contact pictures, since CSV is text only, and custom fields you defined in Outlook, which land in the notes column or vanish depending on the field. Categories flatten too. If pictures matter, the vCard route preserves them: export vcf files with the business card forwarding trick and import those at contacts.google.com instead, Google reads multi contact vcf without complaint.
CSV route done, 600 in with the Imported label. Merge and fix caught 41 duplicates from Gmail's auto saved addresses. Did not care about photos so CSV was fine.