Outlook contacts CSV to Gmail and iPhone

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I tried to convert all my outlook info into Gmail then the IPhone, and I hit a bit of a wall.  The key part of the problem is that outlook "types" all the contact information.  Home Addressses are split into into "Home Street", "Home City", whereas Gmail and iPhone use "weak types" by having just "Home Address".  The solution is to make a new Home Address column that combines all the address information together. It took a bit of figuring out by looking at what they both exported.  Names have the problem that if either first or last is blank, then the name isn't imported.  The solution is to make a new Name column that has the XOR of first and last name.

The solution is some trivial excel magic.  
  1. Export then open the outlook produced CSV.
  2. Find the column labele "Business Street".  In mine it was I1
  3. Insert a new column I before the Business Street.  Label it Business Address
  4. In all cells from I2 to the end, insert the following formula
    =J2&IF(J2<>"";",";"")&K2&IF(K2<>"";",";"")&L2&IF(L2<>"";",";"")&M2&IF(M2<>"";", ";"")&N2&IF(N2<>"";", ";"")&O2&IF(O2<>"";", ";"")&P2
    This formula appends all the Business columns together, and only separates with a ", " if there is a value. 
  5. Remove all the useless Business Country fields
  6. Replace all the cell values of column I with the values.  The easy way is to copy the column, then immediately paste special "values" in Office and "text" in OpenOffice.
  7. Repeat Steps 2 through 6 for "Home Address"
  8. Repeat Steps 2 through 6 for "Other Address"
  9. Find the First Name column.  On my export it was B1.
  10. Insert a new column B before First Name and label it Name
  11. In cells B2 to the end, insert the formula
    =IF(E2 <> "";IF(C2 <>""; "";E2);C2)
  12. Replace all the cell values of column B with the values. 
  13. Import into Gmail
  14. Synch with iPhone.
And there you have it.  It shouldn't take more than about half an hour.  I could have written a vb or actionscript to automate this, but I didn't want to spend the time.  If anybody does, please comment and let the rest of us know.

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This page contains a single entry by Dave Orchard published on August 19, 2008 4:19 AM.

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