Importing Contacts from Yahoo! into Google

After several years of trying, I was finally able to import my contacts from Yahoo! into Google. When I started a couple of years back, Google would choke on the number of contacts I was trying to import (> 2500) -- it would hang, and sputter, and then tell me that some subset of the contacts had been imported (ranging from 1000 to 1800).

Also, Google would choke on the size of some of the fields, e.g., I would use the Comments field extensively in Yahoo! Contacts--but Google apparently didn't allocate as much space to this field as Yahoo! did. The really disappointing/surprising thing was that Google was supposedly trying to grow GMail. Well, Yahoo! Mail has a lot more users than GMail, so you would think that they would want to make the migration process as easy as possible--and that they would have tested it.

Anyway, I would re-test the Gmail contact import process every few months, and each time it would choke--until finally, in Feb. 2009, I tried it and it worked! But not without some issues along the way.

First was Google's issue of not permitting the deletion all of your contacts at once. I can understand that one should be cautious about doing this--but after a few warnings, you ought to be granted permission--it's your account! Google says you can do it in the "older version" of Gmail, but that just hangs with no response. In the "new" version of Gmail, you can do it, but only 500 contacts at a time--and they don't make it easy for you to select 500 contacts at a time. You have to just scroll down and take a guess :-(

Also, this process of deletion hung up in Firefox (the latest current version), so I had to switch to Safari. When I finally deleted all my contacts, I then imported the .CSV file Yahoo had generated. All the contacts came in!

But alas, more issues. I discovered that there were embedded HTML ASCII codes in my contact info. For example, instead of " I would see "e; and instead of ` I would see '.

Was the issue caused by Google's import process or Yahoo!'s export process. I examined the .CSV file and found that the culprit was Yahoo! So I:

1. Searched-and-replaced all of the ASCII codes with the appropriate characters and saved the file
2. Re-deleted my Google contacts 500 at a bloody time
3. Re-imported the .CSV file.

Success, it imported correctly, more or less.

I was disappointed that Google did not map a number of fields, including web addresses. Thus, if I had associated a website with one of my contacts, it was clickable link in Yahoo!, but NOT in Google :-(

Just as a test, I then exported my contacts from Google to a .CSV file. Lo-and-behold, that file did not have HTML ASCII codes, but had the proper characters. The programmers at Google are pretty sharp on the gritty details (if they sometimes miss the bigger UI and workflow picture) :-)

There is one thing that is still missing that I really liked having, and that was the search engine extension for my Yahoo! contacts in Firefox. Search engine extensions allow you to use the search box in the upper right corner of Firefox to search a particular site. It is part of the MyCroft project.

There was a search engine extension for Yahoo! contacts, thus, I could type a name in the search box and immediately search my contacts. I use this box at least a few times each day. Not having it will add a couple of steps to my daily routine (although having all of my contacts in GMail will offset some of those steps.) But it would be nice if there was a search engine extension for Gmail contacts.

Actually, since we are talking about the "search engine king" -- Google -- I'm still wondering when they will make a search across all of my data available to me: Docs, Contacts, Blog, Maps, etc. -- a single place where I can search my data. I guess that won't generate enough ad revenue to put it at the top of the PRD.