Workers` Edge Guide to Contact Management

Workers’ Edge Guide to Contact Management
by Dennis O’Reilly
Copyright 2012 Dennis O’Reilly
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Table of Contents
Sync Gmail and Outlook contacts automatically
Merge your Gmail and iPhone contacts
Sync contacts and calendars between Outlook, Gmail, and iPhone
Merge your Outlook and Gmail contacts
The semi-automatic way to manage multiple contact lists
Share and synchronize your Outlook and Google calendars
Utility merges duplicate Outlook contacts
Sync contacts between Thunderbird, Google
Print your Outlook contacts as mailing labels
Syncing your Google and Outlook calendars
Five quick, useful Google Calendar tweaks
Simple, free Web address book needs encryption
Three online contact managers compared
Sync Gmail and Outlook contacts automatically
The free Contacts Sync utility automatically syncs entries in your Gmail and
Outlook contacts, although some manual tweaking of duplicate and empty entries
will likely be required.
A reader named Maribeth is migrating from Outlook to Gmail and asked about
synchronizing her two accounts:
"I just read your blog about Outlook/Gmail [Merge your Outlook and Gmail contacts]. I
understand this is a fix to make them both the same, but do you know if there is a way to
sync them continually? I still want to use Outlook on my desktop and also have IMAP
movability on my Droidx2 phone and also on an iPad. Is it possible?"
In a July 2009 post I described how to "Sync contacts and calendars between Outlook,
Gmail, and iPhone.” That post refers to the free Google Calendar Sync utility, but there's
no equivalent from the company for syncing contacts. Google does offer its paying
business customers Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook (free trial available).
A potential alternative is the free Contacts Sync utility from Indian company PPP
Infotech, which automatically syncs your Gmail and Outlook contacts. The only glitches
I encountered in testing the program were Outlook's built-in antivirus protection, which
required that I manually allow Contacts Sync to access Outlook's contacts, and the
inability to sync contacts that lack data in the e-mail or last-name fields.
Automating contacts sync between Gmail and Outlook
To sync your Gmail and Outlook contacts via Contacts Sync, enter your Gmail ID and
password in the program's main screen and click the Save Settings button. Then select the
Outlook folder to synchronize (likely All Contacts), choose one of the two sync options
(Outlook contacts to Gmail or Gmail contacts to Outlook), and click the Synchronize
button.
Contacts Sync first fetches the contacts in each system and then syncs the entries. As I
mentioned, a warning popped up in Outlook asking me to grant the program access to the
contacts and to specify the length of time for access (in 1-minute to 10-minute intervals).
Outlook generated a warning when Contacts Sync attempted to access the program's contact entries,
requiring permission for a set period selected via a drop-down menu.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
To activate automatic syncs, check Enable Scheduled Synchronization in the Scheduled
Synchronize area at the bottom of the Contacts Sync window. Enter the number of
minutes between syncs and select one of the two options: Outlook contacts to Gmail, or
Gmail contacts to Outlook. The sync's progress and results appear in a small window that
pops up from the program's icon in the notification area.
The progress and results of an Outlook-Gmail contacts sync appear in a window that appears in the
notification area.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
In testing Contacts Sync the program occasionally failed to complete a sync and
generated a message indicating that the log-in failed. But on subsequent tries--without
reentering the log-in information- the sync completed successfully.
More importantly, Contacts Sync ignored Gmail contacts without data in the last-name or
e-mail fields. For example, several Gmail contacts for businesses didn't appear in the
Outlook contacts after a sync until I had entered something in the entry's last-name or email fields.
The first few times Contacts Sync ran, several entries appeared in the Outlook contacts
on my test PC with only a name or an e-mail address. Some of these appear to be the
result of Gmail's tendency to add contacts automatically when you communicate with
people. After I cleaned up these orphan entries in my Gmail contacts, the problem
disappeared.
Syncs generate duplicate contact entries in Outlook
One other problem I encountered in testing was Contacts Sync's tendency to duplicate
some Gmail contact entries in Outlook. This may have been related to entries that appear
in more than one Gmail contacts folder. The duplications were eliminated by ensuring
that entries appeared in only one Gmail folder, which may or may not be a practical
solution for you.
Another option for dealing with duplicate entries is to use the free Outlook Duplicate
Items Remover (ODIR) utility from the Dutch company Vaita. (I described how to use
ODIR in a post from June 2008.) Note that the program works only with 32-bit versions
of Outlook.
I would much rather deal with the occasional duplicate entry than to worry about contact
data being lost as a result of a sync. The program did a good job of preserving the names,
e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and street addresses of contacts in Gmail and
Outlook, but as I mentioned above, it appears to ignore Gmail entries without data in the
last-name or e-mail fields.
Merge your Gmail and iPhone contacts
Gmail Contact's automerge feature simplifies reconciling entries in your iPhone and
Gmail contact lists, letting you mirror the contact information in your phone and email services.
Contacts just naturally accumulate, but smartphones and e-mail systems collect
information about the people we interact with in very different ways. It's nearly
impossible to maintain a single list of contact information that our primary phone and email services can share.
This hit home the other day when I noticed the entry for a new contact in Google had the
person's e-mail addresses but not her phone numbers, and her entry in my iPhone had the
phone numbers but not her e-mail addresses. Dozens of these little inconsistencies had
appeared in the months since I had last synced my contacts.
The two lists mirror each other much more accurately now that I combine iTunes' Google
sync feature with Google's "Find & merge duplicates" option.
(In a post from 2009 I described how to use Google Sync to combine contacts and
calendar entries in Outlook, Gmail, and iPhones. Since I now use Outlook only to back
up my Gmail inbox and Google Calendar, I no longer need the three-way sync, thank
goodness.)
Start by backing up your iPhone; instructions are provided on the Apple Support site.
With your iPhone attached to your PC, choose the Info tab in iTunes, check Sync
Contacts with, select Google Contacts in the drop-down menu, and click Sync. You may
have to enter your Gmail sign-in information. A window will open indicating the number
of contacts that will be added, deleted, and modified.
Sync your iPhone and Gmail contacts via iTunes, run Gmail's automerge to winnow the entries, and
move the cleaned-up list back to your iPhone.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
Once the iPhone contact information has been added to your Gmail contacts, open the
Gmail contacts list and click More actions > Find & merge duplicates. Any redundant
entries the scanner locates are displayed with links for more details. Click Merge to
combine all the duplicates at once.
Use Google Contacts' automerge function to clear duplicate entries prior to syncing the list with your
iPhone contacts via iTunes.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
After the duplicate entries have been excised, review the contact list to spot any double
(or triple or quadruple) entries that automerge may have missed. In my case, 23 duplicate
entries were merged automatically but about a half-dozen other dupes remained. To
merge these manually, check their entries in the main contact list and click More Actions
> Merge Contacts.
When you're satisfied that the Google contacts are in order, return to iTunes and run the
contact-sync option again to copy the newly trimmed list to your phone. The contact
entries in Google and on your iPhone will then be identical, or as close to identical as the
two systems allow.
Sync contacts and calendars between Outlook, Gmail, and iPhone
Google Calendar Sync and Gmail's Contacts export and import let you combine
information stored in Outlook, your iPhone or other smartphone, and Google's
services.
In a post from February 2009 I described losing half my iPhone contacts after an iTunes
sync. Even though I tried the Filadex Web-based contact manager, I don't like the fact
that the information is stored unencrypted on Web servers.
More importantly, my iPhone always has my most up-to-date telephone and address
contact list, while Gmail knows more about my e-mail correspondents than the iPhone
does, and Google Calendar is my primary scheduler. Just to complicate matters, I spend
most of my workdays (and some weekends, unfortunately) in Outlook.
I need to export my Google Calendar and Gmail addresses to Outlook and my iPhone,
and move my iPhone telephone numbers and physical addresses to Gmail and Outlook.
Simple, right? Well, it turned out to be not too difficult or time-consuming, although the
result was a bit messy.
Sync Google Calendar with calendars in Outlook and the iPhone
Who knew Google Calendar and Outlook could play so nice? The aptly named Google
Calendar Sync does the trick with just a few clicks and a minimum of thumb-twiddling.
The program works with Outlook 2003 and 2007 on XP and Vista PCs, though it doesn't
support 64-bit XP, according to Google.
After you download and install the program, you enter your Google ID and password and
choose one of three options: sync from and to Google Calendar and Outlook; sync from
Google Calendar to Outlook; or sync from Outlook to Google Calendar. The default sync
time is 120 minutes, and the minimum setting is 10 minutes; there's no mention of a
maximum setting. The sync begins after you click Save.
Choose two-way or one-way sync between Outlook and Google Calendar in the Google Calendar
Sync utility.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Up-and-down arrows on the Google Calendar icon in the notification area indicate a sync
in progress; hover over it to see the percent complete or the time of the last sync.
The program converted my relatively simple Google Calendar to Outlook 2007 with
surprising accuracy. In fact, the two calendars appeared and acted very much alike. Keep
in mind, I didn't transfer any tricky repeating appointments, invitations, or time-zone
changes. But for my meager calendar needs, the sync was fast and comprehensive.
To sync your Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with an iPhone, simply use the phone
to create a Google Sync account. Instructions for OS version 2.2 and 3.0 are on the
Google Mobile Help site.
Unfortunately, Google Sync is limited in the fields it supports and doesn't let you exclude
entries or deal with duplicates. These and other of the program's limitations are described
on the Google Sync Help page.
Move your iPhone contacts to Gmail and Outlook, or vice-versa
Use iTunes to export your iPhone contacts to Outlook--and Gmail, if you choose not to
go the Google Sync route described above. Plug your iPhone into your PC, choose the
device in iTunes' left pane, and select the Info tab. Pick either Outlook or Google
Contacts in the "Sync contacts from" drop-down menu. (Yahoo Address Book and
Windows Address Book are the other options.) For Outlook, you can choose which
groups to sync. For Gmail, you enter your user ID and password.
Your only sync options are to merge or replace the entries iTunes identifies as duplicates,
and to choose between two entries pegged as conflicts. The resulting sync was full of
double entries, but I would much rather deal with manually merging the dupes than
losing the information either entry contains.
iTunes' sync with Google Contacts provides few options for dealing with duplicate entries.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
I'll probably spend another hour or so cleaning up the extra entries created by the contact
sync, but that's much less time than I'd spend trying to replace the info.
Merge your Outlook and Gmail contacts
Combine the names and e-mail addresses stored in your client- and Web-based
accounts.
I spend most of my workday Alt-Tabbing between my Gmail inbox and the Outlook
account on my employer's Exchange Server. The problem is, when it comes to contacts,
there isn't much overlap between the two: Only a handful of Gmail addresses are also in
the Outlook contacts list, and vice-versa.
Rectifying the situation takes only a few minutes. Start by moving your Outlook contacts
to Gmail. In Outlook 2003 and 2007, click File > Import and Export, select "Export to a
file," click Next, choose either comma-separated value option, and click Next again.
Browse to and select your Contacts folder, click Next again, choose the Browse button,
pick a location for the file, give it a name with the .csv extension, click OK, and click
Next once more. Verify the action and click Finish.
Verify the export action to move Outlook contacts to Gmail.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
After the file-export finishes (it can take a while), open Gmail, click Contacts on the left,
and choose Import at the top right. Click Browse and navigate to and select the file you
just exported. You can create a new group for the contacts by choosing "Also add these
imported contacts to" before you click Import. You'll be prompted to give the group a
name.
Select the .csv file you exported from Outlook to import your contacts to Gmail.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Once the file is imported, you'll see a summary indicating the number of contacts added,
merged, or ignored because they were duplicates. Click OK to return to your list of
contacts.
Gmail shows a summary of the contacts imported from Outlook.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Now turn the process around by moving your Gmail contacts to Outlook. On the Gmail
Contacts page, click Export in the top right, choose to export just your contacts or your
contacts and Gmail's suggested contacts, select "Outlook's CSV format (for importing
into Outlook or other applications)," and click the Export button.
The file is named "contacts.csv" automatically. Select the Save File button (it's chosen by
default) and click OK. The list will be saved in your Downloads folder (or whichever
folder you've picked as your default). Open Outlook, click File > Import and Export >
Import from another program or file > Next.
Choose the appropriate comma-separated-value option and click Next again. Click the
Browse button, navigate to and select the .csv file you just created, pick one of the
options regarding duplicate entries (the default is "Allow duplicates to be created"), and
click Next again. Choose the destination folder (probably Contacts under Personal
Folders for your account), verify the action, and click Finish.
Any addresses with unrecognizable names will be listed first with only the e-mail
address, but other contacts will appear alphabetically by last name.
The semi-automatic way to manage multiple contact lists
Clean up outdated and duplicate contact entries in Gmail or Outlook, then export
the updated list so it's ready to sync with your iPhone or iPad via iTunes or iCloud.
Few business resources are as valuable as your list of contacts. It's no wonder companies
such as Twitter and iPad app vendor Path are trying to get their hands on their customers'
contacts--with or without their express permission.
Contacts are like rabbits: they tend to multiply whenever they get together.
In the past year my Gmail contact list has grown by 50 percent, not to mention the many
updates and changes to existing entries. Contact-sync programs promise to keep the
information in multiple address books up-to-date, but the programs I've tried create so
many duplicate records they're more trouble than they're worth.
You can save time in the long run by doing manual touch-ups to a single master contact
list and then export the up-to-date address book to your other devices. Start by cleaning
up contacts in Gmail or Outlook before you import the list to your iPad, iPhone, or online
address book.
Remove duplicates, refresh outdated contacts in Gmail and Outlook
The Microsoft Office support site describes your options for handling duplicate records
when you import contact lists to Outlook. Once the duplicates are in the list, you have to
delete them manually by sorting them by name, e-mail address, or other field, Ctrlselecting the dupes, and pressing Delete.
The find-&-merge feature in Gmail Contacts removes duplicate entries but often repeats information
in the resulting blended contact.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
Gmail automates duplicate-contact removal. Click More in the Contacts window and
choose Find & merge duplicates. A window pops up listing the duplicates. Click the
Merge button to have Gmail combine the information in the duplicates into single entries
for each name or e-mail address. Depending on the number and content of the contacts,
the resulting records may repeat the same information in multiple fields.
When I ran Gmail's duplicate-entry remover, my contact list was cut in half to 625
entries. It took about a half-hour to manually delete the remaining duplicates and remove
orphan entries. The list then hovered around 600 addresses. I spent another 30 minutes
updating the information with new and changed phone numbers and addresses from my
iPhone, which is where most changes are recorded first.
Lastly, click More > Export, select the group you want to export in the drop-down list at
the top of the window, choose one of the three export formats (Google, Outlook, or
VCard for Apple address books and other apps), and click Export.
Export your cleaned-up Gmail contact list in Google, Outlook, or Vcard format.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
As I mentioned above, Outlook lacks an automatic way to delete duplicate records,
although add-ons such as the free Outlook Duplicate Items Remover promise to do the
job. (As I mentioned above, I described how to use ODIR in a post from June 2008.)
You'll probably spend more time and effort downloading and installing an add-on than
you would simply deleting the duplicate Outlook contacts manually using the sort-and-
Ctrl-click method. Then update the contacts with the new entries and changed
information from your phone or wherever you record new numbers and addresses as you
learn of them.
To export Outlook's contacts, click File > Import and Export, and step through the
wizard, as described on the Microsoft support site.
Move your new contact list to an iPhone or iPad via iTunes
To add contacts exported from Outlook or Gmail to an iPhone or iPad, connect the device
to a PC or Mac, open iTunes, choose the device in the left pane, and click the Info tab.
The options under Sync Address Book Contacts let you sync some or all contacts with
Google or Yahoo. Under Advanced at the bottom of the screen is an option to replace the
contacts on the device with the list from the computer.
Replacing the iPhone/iPad contacts with the clean version on the PC or Mac avoids the
duplicates that ultimately result from synching the different lists--at least most of the
dupes. In testing this feature I found that there were always one or two more records on
the iPad or iPhone than there are in the original list.
If you have an iCloud account you can set the iPhone or iPad to sync contacts with that
service via the device's Settings options. Choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars and select
Add Account. Choose iCloud, enter the account information, and step through the signup wizard. Select the services you want to activate (including Contacts) and press Save.
Sync the contacts on an iPad or iPhone with Apple's iCloud service by adding an account in the
device's Settings window.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O'Reilly)
I wasn't able to achieve my goal of having identical contact lists in Gmail, Outlook, my
Mac's address book, my iPhone, and my iPad, but I came pretty close: when I was done
with three hours' worth of cleaning, exporting, and importing, the five repositories each
had between 597 and 605 entries. Those are numbers I can live with.
Share and synchronize your Outlook and Google calendars
Keep all your appointments in single place, and make them accessible to you and
anyone else in your browser.
Since I started synchronizing my e-mail inboxes way back in 2007, I rarely open my
Outlook mail client. I much prefer seeing the messages sent to my ISP's POP account and
those sent to my Gmail account together in my Gmail inbox. But I still have to open
Outlook to view my calendar, which I've been using for years, even though I now put
many of my nonwork appointments in Google Calendar, which I can access from my
iPhone or any Internet-connected PC.
I thought I found a free program that would let me synchronize the two calendars
automatically. Synchronization Technologies' SyncMyCal claims to let you sync multiple
Outlook calendars with your Google Calendar. I gave the program a try, but I while it let
me transfer the entries on my Google Calendar to my Outlook equivalent, I couldn't get
all my Outlook appointments to register on Google Calendar.
I'll keep troubleshooting the problem, though I hope I don't have to upgrade to the $25
SyncMyCal Pro version, which automates the calendar syncs, and lets you work with
appointments in time chunks longer than the free version's limit of 7 days. Until then I'll
stick with the manual approach to Outlook/Google Calendar integration.
Send your Google Calendar entries to Outlook 2003 and 2007
Start by logging into your Google account and opening your calendar. Click the “Manage
calendars” link at the bottom of the left pane, and then click the name of the calendar to
open the Calendar Details dialog box. Scroll to Private Address near the bottom of the
window and click ICAL.
Click ICAL next to Private Address in Google Calendar's Calendar Details dialog to generate the
URL you'll use to import the calendar to Outlook.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Unfortunately, Outlook 2003 doesn't support the iCalendar format. I was able to add
Google Calendar entries to my Outlook 2003 calendar one at a time by clicking the link
in the popup window to download the entry, opening the file in Outlook, and clicking
Save and Close. But this approach isn't any faster than adding the entries manually.
At least Outlook 2007 lets you import an iCalendar file directly: Copy the long URL in
the Google Calendar's Private Address popup window, open your Outlook calendar, and
click File>Import and Export. Choose Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file (.vcs),
and click Next. Paste the URL you copied from the popup into the File name field at the
bottom of the Browse dialog box, and click Open. Click Import, and your Google
Calendar entries are added to your Outlook calendar.
Import your Google Calendar as an iCalendar file (.ics) to add its entries to your Outlook 2007
calendar.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Transfer your Outlook calendar to Google Calendar
To move your Outlook schedule to your Google Calendar, Open Outlook 2003 or 2007
and click File > Import and Export > Export to a file > Next. Choose Comma Separated
Values (Windows) and click Next again. Navigate to and select your Calendar folder (it
should be highlighted by default), and click Next yet again. In Outlook 2003, verify the
location of the saved .csv file (change it if you want to place it elsewhere), and click Next
once more. In Outlook 2007, select a location for the file, give it a name, and click OK
and then Next. Click Finish, set the date range for the calendar entries to be exported, and
click OK.
Now open your Google Calendar, click the small down arrow next to Add in the left
pane, and choose Import Calendar. Select the Browse button, navigate to and select the
.csv file you just created, and click Open. Choose the calendar you want to import it to (it
will likely be selected by default), and click Import.
Select the .csv file you exported from Outlook to import it to your Google Calendar.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Utility merges duplicate Outlook contacts
4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook makes it easy to combine information in
duplicate contact entries.
If you followed the steps in my post on merging your Outlook and Gmail contacts, you
may have ended up with duplicates in your contact lists. Microsoft's advice for deleting
duplicate contacts is to sort them by the date modified, Ctrl-select the ones you want to
remove, and press delete.
The problem is, the duplicate entries probably aren't identical, so you're almost certain to
delete some data along with the dupe. What you need is a way to merge the information
in the duplicate contacts. There's no such feature in Outlook, but if you're willing to
spend $30, you can make short work of your extraneous Outlook entries by running
4Team's Duplicate Killer for Outlook.
The program deletes or merges duplicate e-mail messages, calendar entries, tasks, and
notes in addition to contacts. I tested the program with Outlook 2007 but, according to
the vendor, it works with Outlook 2000, XP, and 2003 as well. The new version, 3, is
said to work with "Microsoft Exchange type folders, including public folders," according
to the vendor's Web site, but I ran it on a standalone Outlook installation.
After you install Duplicate Killer, you'll find three new items on Outlook's Actions menu:
Duplicate Killer Advanced Wizard, Duplicate Killer Quick Wizard, and Merge. When in
your Contacts list, you also have the option to "Search for duplicates in distribution lists."
The Advanced Wizard lets you specify the folders to search for duplicates, the fields to
compare, and various actions you can take when duplicates are found. You can also save
your selections as a profile and send the profile to an e-mail address.
Duplicate Killer for Outlook's Advanced Wizard lets you save your selections as a profile and e-mail
the profile to the address of your choice.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
The Quick Wizard provided all the options I needed without having to work through as
many option screens. The current folder is selected by default, as is the option to compare
and merge, so you simply click Start and let the program do the work.
Duplicate Killer identifies and deletes identical e-mails, calendar entries, notes, and tasks in addition
to duplicate contacts.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
The program made quick work of my duplicate Outlook data: the process took about a
minute in a list of about 75 contacts, 27 of which were dupes. I didn't notice any missing
information in the resulting merged entries. The only downside to Duplicate Killer is that
the trial version will merge only five records. That's not sufficient to get a real feel for its
capabilities. Still, if you have dozens of duplicate contacts—not to mention e-mails,
notes, tasks, and calendar entries—the program can save your hours of manual data entry
and cleanup.
Sync contacts between Thunderbird, Google
The free Zindus add-on for Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail program makes it easy to
import and export contacts from Google and Zimbra.
When you read the post above describing how to sync contacts between Outlook, Gmail,
and your iPhone, you may have noticed a program missing from this contacts megamerge: Thunderbird (download for Windows | Mac). There’s a good reason for that:
Mozilla's free e-mail program is not particularly contact-friendly.
The first time I attempted to use Mozilla Thunderbird's import function to bring my
Gmail contacts into the client e-mail application, I was seriously disappointed with the
results. Most of the contact information was squished into a single nondescript field for
each record. The few fields that did make the conversion were incomplete. The entire
process was pretty worthless, overall.
Then I found the free Zindus add-on for Thunderbird. The program brings a subset of
contact fields from Google and Zimbra into Mozilla's free e-mail program. For Google,
the fields imported include the contact's name, primary and secondary e-mail addresses,
phone numbers, IM names, company, title, and notes. (I didn't test the program with
Zimbra.)
After you download and install Zindus, a "Zindus" option is added to Thunderbird's Tools
menu. Clicking it opens the Zindus Configuration Settings dialog box where you're
presented with a handful of contact-sync options, including a Sync Now button.
The Zindus Configuration Settings dialog lets you reset your sync options.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Start by clicking Add to open the New Account dialog box. Choose either Google or
Zimbra, enter your address and password, choose the account you want to sync contacts
with and whether to include Google suggested contacts, and click OK to add the account.
Back in the Zindus configuration window, select the account, and click Sync Now to
begin the process.
When the import completes, a new address book appears in Thunderbird with the default
name of the account from which the contacts were imported. You'll also find the Zindus
icon at the bottom of the main Thunderbird mail and address-book windows. Click it to
sync your Google contacts with Thunderbird.
After you import your Google contacts, a new address book appears in Thunderbird that contains
selected fields from your Google contacts.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
The import process isn't perfect; expect a good amount of cleanup as information in
different fields gets merged here and there. But what I really need are the e-mail
addresses, and these come through the import process fairly well.
As soon as I begin to enter an address in the To: field of a new Thunderbird message, I'm
able to select the addresses I'm sending to from a drop-down menu that lists all the
addresses beginning with those letters. That's all I really need. Sure, it would be nice to
generate mailing labels from Thunderbird contacts, but there are better ways to create
such labels.
Maybe someday we'll be able to enter a contact's information once and have it available
in all our applications that require it. Until that day arrives (I'm not holding my breath),
free services such as Zindus fill the gap nicely, if not particularly precisely.
Print your Outlook contacts as mailing labels
Import your contacts to Microsoft Word and use that program's mail merge to
print your contact addresses.
A friend asked if it's possible to print a subset of the addresses in her Microsoft Outlook
contacts as mailing labels. You would think that such a basic operation would be a breeze
for an industrial-strength personal-information manager like Outlook. You would think
wrong.
The first bit of counter-intuitivity is that you use Microsoft Word, not Outlook. If you use
Outlook's own mail-merge function by clicking Tools > Mail Merge, you get kicked into
Word anyway. And every time I tried to run the resulting wizard, Word stalled in midprocess.
Instead, move the contacts whose addresses you want to print into a new folder in
Outlook's contact list. With your new contact folder in place, click Tools > Letters and
Mailings > Mail Merge in Word 2003 or the Mail Merge tab on Word 2007's ribbon.
In Word 2003, click the Labels button in the Mail Merge task pane and click Next. Now
choose "Change document layout," click Label Options, select the layout you prefer, and
click OK. Choose "Next: Select recipients" at the bottom of the task pane.
In Word 2007, click Start Merge > Labels, select your label layout, click OK, and choose
Select Recipients. In both versions, choose "Select from Outlook contacts," click Choose
Contacts Folder, and select the Outlook contact folder you just created.
In the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box, you can uncheck any names you want to
remove from the list, sort the list by any category, or filter it. When the list looks the way
you want it, click OK.
Modify, sort, and filter your list of Outlook contacts before you create your mailing labels.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
In Word 2003, click "Next: Arrange your labels" and choose Address Block. In Word
2007, place the cursor in the first label and click Address Block. In both versions, make
any necessary changes to the address layout and click OK. Now choose "Update all
labels" in Word 2003 or Update Labels in Word 2007. The address block will appear in
each label following "Next Record."
In Word 2003, click "Next: Preview your labels," and in Word 2007 click Preview
Results. If you're happy with the look of your labels, click "Next: Complete the merge" in
Word 2003 or Finish & Merge in Word 2007. In Word 2003, leave All selected and
choose Print. In Word 2007, click Print Documents. You can also choose to edit the
contacts before you print them.
A shorter method of printing the addresses is to choose Directory rather than Labels in
the Mail Merge task pane of Word 2003 or Word 2007's Start Merge button. This places
the addresses together in a single document, but you'll probably have choose the Edit
option before you print to clean up the resulting formatting.
Syncing your Google and Outlook calendars
Google Calendar Sync, a free utility from the search giant, makes it easy to keep
your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar on the same page. There are
a few caveats, though.
In a post from January 2008 I described how to swap data between your Google Calendar
and the calendar in Outlook 2003 or 2007, using the import/export functions of each
product.
A few months later, Google released a free program that not only moves data between the
two calendar apps, but it also syncs the calendar entries automatically at the interval of
your choice.
Google Calendar Sync is so fast and simple to use that my calendars were synced before I
knew it. When you install the program, you're asked where you want to place the utility's
shortcuts; by default, they'll be added to your Start menu and desktop.
Uncheck the installer's shortcut options to prevent a new icon to be added to your Start menu or
desktop.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
When the installation completes, the program's main window opens, prompting you to
add your Google ID and password, and to select either two-way syncs, syncs from
Google Calendar to Outlook, or syncs from Outlook to Google Calendar. You can also
reset the frequency of updates; the default is every two hours.
Decide whether you want two-way calendar syncs, or one-way transfers between Google Calendar
and Outllook.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
If Outlook's not open on your machine, you'll be prompted to enter your Outlook
username and password. Then the data in each calendar will be added to the other (if you
selected the two-way option). When I installed the Google sync utility, I was surprised
how quickly the dozens of entries in my Google Calendar were added to Outlook.
I didn't I notice any missing or garbled entries. In fact, the similarity of the two calendars'
appearance was a little spooky: I thought for a second that Google had taken possession
of my copy of Office. (I probably jumped the gun on that thought by a couple of years.)
Google offers some caveats about using its Calendar Sync program. For example, you
need to uninstall any third-party calendar-syncing applications on your PC beforehand. If
you've been using another method, you must choose which of the two calendars you want
to use as your primary one and clear the entries from the other. Finally, you have to
perform a one-way sync from the primary to the secondary before you can schedule
automated syncs.
Another limitation of the utility is that only your pop-up event reminders will transfer
from Google Calendar to your Outlook calendar because Outlook doesn't support e-mail
and SMS alerts. If you encounter problems using Google Calendar Sync, check the
information on Google's troubleshooting page for the program.
After seeing what Google can do to enhance Office applications, I'm thinking that a
Windows-killing desktop operating system from the company isn't such a bad idea.
Five quick, useful Google Calendar tweaks
Keep events private, change your default view, add weather info, use keyboard
shortcuts, and import specialty calendars.
I keep waiting for the day I can view my Google Calendar entries while I'm offline-without having to export the entries to Outlook or another standalone calendar program.
Until that day, here are five ways to get make better use of Google's free calendar service.
Lock out unwanted viewers
To make sure your calendar entries are private, click the down arrow next to the calendar
under My Calendars on the left side of the screen. Choose "Share this calendar" to open
that tab in your settings. Uncheck "Make this calendar public," and be sure there are no
names but your own listed under "Share with specific people." When you're done, click
Save to return to your calendar.
Uncheck "Make this calendar public" in Google Calendar's "Share this calendar" settings.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
You can also check the privacy of an individual calendar entry by clicking it and
choosing "edit event details" in the pop-up window. Make sure that either Default or
Private is selected on the left side of the window under Options, and click Save.
Make sure that others can't view a calendar event by choosing either Default or Private in the event
details dialog.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
Lock in your favorite calendar view
Seeing only one day's worth or even one week's worth of events at a time doesn't give me
the scheduling information I need at a glance. That's why I prefer Google Calendar's
monthly view, which I made my default by clicking Settings > General, choosing
"month" on the drop-down menu next to "Default view," and clicking Save.
Place a weather forecast in your calendar
One of my favorite iGoogle gadgets is the one that puts a four-day weather forecast on
my home page. Now I get a mini-version of that forecast in my Google Calendar. To add
a weather report to your calendar entries, click Settings > General, add your city and state
or ZIP code in the text box next to Location, choose either Celsius or Fahrenheit next to
"Show weather based on my location," and click Save.
Navigate your calendar via keyboard shortcuts
Make fast work of your calendar tasks by skipping the mouse and using Google
Calendar's keyboard shortcuts instead. Among my favorites are C to create an event, M to
change the view to monthly (see above to reset your default calendar view), W to change
to the weekly view, D to see only that day's entries, and Q to open the Quick Add pop-up
window. Google provides a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for calendars and for
event details.
Add a specialty calendar
Football season is right around the corner, and now I'm ready with all my alma mater's
games listed on my Google Calendar. And all I had to do to add them was download one
of the public calendars that Google collects in its calendar gallery.
To view the gallery, click the down arrow next to Add on the left side of the screen and
choose "Add a public calendar." You can either browse the categories on the left side of
the window or enter a term in the search box at the top of the screen.
Along with calendars for TV shows, sports teams, presidential candidates, and movie and
DVD releases are entries listing celebrity birthdays, phases of the moon, and the holidays
celebrated in various countries.
Simple, free Web address book needs encryption
Flexadex lets you store addresses and phone numbers online, but a lack of Secure
Sockets Layer encryption means that your data is not secure.
I spent a good part of the last week searching for a simple, free, and safe place to store
my contacts online. Well, two out of three ain't bad.
The last time I synced my iPhone, iTunes offered to sync my contacts as well. I clicked
OK without thinking. Before I knew it, I had lost about half of my phone's contact
entries.
Backup? What backup? The entries in my Outlook and Gmail contacts were woefully
outdated, compared to the contact information I stored in my iPhone. I had no choice but
to reassemble the lost data phone number by phone number, address by address.
That was a good two weeks ago, and I'm still restoring the lost data. I vowed that this
wouldn't happen again. What I needed was the online version of an old-fashioned paper
address book.
What I didn't need was a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM)
application, but those were all I found at first. I tried WebAsyst, Keepm, and
BigContacts, but all three were overkill for my meager needs. (None of the three was able
to manage the simple trick of importing my Gmail or Outlook contacts with anything
approaching accuracy, either.)
I was about to bail on the whole project when I decided to try Flexadex, a Web-based
application that gets your contact information online in a blink. The only fly in the
ointment is that the service doesn't use Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, so all those
addresses and phone numbers are flying over the Net unencrypted.
What really bugs me is that I wouldn't need a separate online address book if either
Gmail or Outlook offered the meager contact management features I need. Have you ever
tried editing your contacts in Gmail? Whenever I try, clicking the Edit button opens some
entry other than the one I'm trying to change. Just getting all the names in "lastname,
firstname" format is impossible.
Editing Outlook contacts is more straightforward, but the entries in your Outlook address
book don't travel well. Outlook doesn't let you export to a file in the VCard format (.vcf).
And none of the three full-size online contact managers I tried was able to import
Outlook contacts without skipping or screwing up much of the information.
I followed the steps described in the tip above on merging your Outlook and Gmail
contacts to move my contacts from Outlook to Gmail. Then I used Gmail's contact export
function to create a VCard file I could import to Flexadex. As you can imagine, the result
was less than perfect.
Fortunately, editing the entries in Flexadex is quick and simple. Just double-click a name
to open its record, which consists of two text fields: Title and Contents. You can also
send e-mail from the service, or e-mail a record using your own e-mail client.
Flexadex address book entries are comprised of two text fields: Title and Contents.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
There's a big, big problem for anyone hoping to use this service for business. Your data
isn't encrypted, so don't even think about uploading any information you wouldn't want to
share with your competitors. In fact, I'm not comfortable storing the addresses and phone
numbers of family and friends on the service until it adds SSL support.
If you're looking for an easy-to-use, free online address book--and you don't mind the
lack of encryption--Flexadex might fit the bill.
Three online contact managers compared
The two free services — LinkedIn and Vision Pipeline Assistant — can't match the
accuracy and versatility of the $60-a-year Plaxo Premium.
In a perfect world, the addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information of
your family members, friends, and associates would be entered in your various address
books automatically. I'll settle for an online service that lets me transfer the information
from my phone and e-mail contact lists simply and accurately.
One of the tips above describes how to sync calendars and contacts between an iPhone,
Gmail, and Outlook . The contact info on my iPhone is always the more current than my
Gmail and Outlook contacts, but I access the three contact lists about equally.
Neither the iPhone nor Gmail contacts can match Outlook's ability to sort contacts by
field. Still, I can access information in my iPhone and Gmail contacts from any location
with a network link. What I'd like is a contact manager with Outlook's sortability and the
easy access of the iPhone and Gmail. I tried three different online contact managers, but
none fit the bill exactly, though the commercial product outshone the two free offerings.
In LinkedIn, contact management is an afterthought
At LinkedIn, it's all about professional connections. The service offers to expand your
LinkedIn network by importing contact information from your Web or desktop e-mail
account and then sending invitations to the people whose addresses are already
registered.
To import contact information, click Add Connections in the top right of the Contacts
page. Adding data from a Web mail system is as simple as entering your address, signing
into the mail account, and granting the LinkedIn importer permission to access your
contacts.
Importing contact information from Web mail services requires granting LinkedIn permission to
access your contact list.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
When I imported 62 contacts from Hotmail, for example, LinkedIn added 34 of the
entries, updated 28 others, and offered to send invitations to 37 of the addresses.
Unfortunately, after importing the addresses (and declining the offer to send the
invitations), I was left with several duplicates that I had to delete, but doing so was as
easy as checking the dupes and pressing the "Delete selected contacts" button.
LinkedIn lets you group your connections by assigning them tags. You can also view
contacts by company, location, industry, and recent activity. The contacts are listed by
last name, which is a refreshing change after having to live with Gmail sorting entries
only by their first names. You can jump through your LinkedIn contact list by selecting
an initial along the left side of the window.
Contact information imported from Outlook relatively completely, including multiple
phone numbers and e-mail addresses properly labeled as "mobile," "work," and "home."
But imports from Web mail services sometimes created dozens of name-only entries. At
least cleaning up the empty items took only a few seconds.
Rough edges abound in Vision Pipeline Assistant beta
We've become accustomed to relatively stable beta products and services, but Vision
Pipeline Assistant is a free trial that lives down to the beta tag. The service bills itself as a
customer relationship management (CRM) system, and as such it's much more than a
contact manager.
Most of the action in Vision Pipeline Assistant is based on activities that let you track
past contacts with the person and plan future ones in the hunt for those ever-elusive sales.
I'm not a sales person and don't need to track when I communicate with the people on my
contact list. I just want an easy way to access and manage the contacts. For that purpose,
Vision Pipeline Assistant is not the best choice.
It took several attempts to import Outlook contacts into Vision Pipeline Assistant from a
CSV file exported from the program, and the process was anything but intuitive.
Ultimately, only a handful of e-mail addresses and telephone numbers were imported,
and most imported entries were nothing but names. When you select one or more
contacts, a window appears on the left side of the entry list allowing you to schedule or
log an activity, send an e-mail, delete the contact, apply a tag, or export or archive the
entry.
The Vision Pipeline Assistant service lets you track activities related to your contacts.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
One salesman I know swears by Vision Pipeline Assistant's intuitiveness for tracking and
planning sales calls and meetings. The service is certainly much simpler to use than
ACT! or other industrial-strength CRM systems. But importing information to Vision
Pipeline Assistant from your current contact manager is anything but simple.
Plaxo Premium's time savings may be worth $60 a year
Many people were seriously ticked off when Plaxo starting charging for some contactmanagement features several years ago. But Plaxo's import options outshine those of the
other two online contact managers I tried. Whether they're worth $60 a year depends on
how many contacts you have to manage, and how much time you spend managing them.
(If you're not sure you need the premium services, you can try them for 30 days for free.)
Plaxo lets you import contacts from Outlook, AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, or Hotmail. When
you sign up for Plaxo Premium, you're given the option to sync with your Outlook
contacts, remove duplicate entries automatically, back up your contacts, and sync with
Windows Mobile smartphones.
The service lists your contacts in alphabetical order by last name. You can't jump from
letter to letter as you can in LinkedIn's contact list, but you can switch between pages
listing about 50 entries at a time. Data imports accurately from Outlook and Web mail
systems (I tested Plaxo's import function with my Gmail contacts). E-mail addresses and
phone numbers were appropriately labeled "work," "home," "mobile," and other
categories, and information in the notes fields in Outlook and Gmail appeared in the
corresponding Plaxo entries.
Plaxo Premium services include Outlook syncs, contact backups, and duplicate-entry removal.
(Credit: screenshot by Dennis O’Reilly)
I'm not sure I can justify spending $60 a year for the convenience offered by Plaxo's
premium contact-management tools, but there's no beating the service for accurate, fast,
and straightforward contact imports. Until Gmail picks up some of Plaxo's contactmanagement talents, there's really no competition.
About the author
Dennis O’Reilly has been writing about personal technology since microfiche and ROM
readers roamed the Earth. He spends his leisure hours wondering how all these strange
names got into his contact lists. When not in front of a computer he can be found riding
his heavy-duty Schwinn bicycle at a steady 7.5 miles an hour along the back roads of
Sonoma County.
Dennis can be reached at doreilly@gmail.com
The Workers’ Edge blog is at http://news.cnet.com/workers-edge