Migrating Contacts From Google

Arcalis

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Jan 23, 2013
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Hey everyone,

I'm wondering if you can help me migrate some of my data from my Google account to MS. Most important to me are my contacts. I was with Android for around 4 years, so my whole mobile life is with them, pretty much. I brought the HTC 8X about 2 months ago now and I'm looking to move my stuff over to MS as I've started to become a little jaded with Google. Also, Google's draconian new contact rules are giving me another incentive to pull my finger out and make the switch.

When I first got my WP8, I signed into my Google account and it pulled all my contacts down to my phone like a charm. What I wanted to know was whether these contacts are now on MS servers as well? (i.e when Google pull the sync plug, would I even notice??) I have gone into 'People' through the Outlook website and all my contacts are there. However, when I try to edit a contact I get the message "You can't change Facebook, Skype, Twitter, or Google contact information, but you can add details that will appear on this contact's card." This might sound like a stupid question but what exactly does this mean?? I didn't want to have to rely on a 3rd party application such as GContacts to keep my contacts in sync with Google, I would rather just move everything over to my MS account so I can edit away.

So then, ideally, I would love to be able to just export my contact card from Google, then just import it straight to my Outlook account where it can then do its business and sync with FB, Twitter etc etc which will then sync with my 8X. Does that make sense? I'm not entirely sure if that's the process but that's what I would like to do, at any rate! That way, I don't have to worry about Google sync.

As time goes on, I would also like to move away from other Google services. However, browser sync through Chrome and Google's search results are just too good compared with IE10 and Bing (in my opinion) so I can't quite do without those right now. However, contacts and email migration is do-able so I would like to move across, if at all possible.

Thanks everyone for your time!
 

pjs37

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Apr 24, 2012
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Well let me take a stab at what I think you are asking for: You want to export your contacts from google and then import them into your outlook.com account right?

If that's the case I did that recently and its not too hard.

First in Google go to the contact manager and export the file as (Click the More button then select 'Export') and I did it as a Outlook CSV file. Then I went to outlook.com People selected the Manage button did Add People and then did the last option "Import from file" from there I pointed it towards my exported file and it worked pretty well. On my phone side I made sure I had my contact sync turned on with my outlook account (It should be automatically forced on for the primary Microsoft account so if that is what you want then great!) and turned it off on my gmail account settings. I then went through and linked all my various contacts together where appropriate on my phone.

To move my actual mail over all I did was set up an auto forward on my gmail account under the gmail settings pointing to my outlook.com address and told Gmail to auto archive my emails. In addition to that I set outlook.com under the Settings button "More Mail Settings" I set up my gmail account as a send only account and set my default From address to my gmail account so people wouldn't be confused. I recently turned it off but it was a pretty painless transition.

For my Google calendar all I did was export my calendar under the settings and calendar tab which gave me a zip file. I extracted that and then imported that into my Outlook.com calendar. This is the confusing bit here: You have to click the Subscribe button (which is totally counter intuitive) and then you select the ICS file from google and choose the existing calendar. That will import it.

I hope this helps you move your data to the Microsoft stuff. Once you do all that you can delete that Google account from your phone to see if it all worked :)
 

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