Google Contacts Get More Useful

July 16th, 2008 (8:00am) Mike Gunderloy 6 CommentsTweet This

Thanks, Google. We knew someone would listen when we posted our list of 25 things that annoy us about Google services. Here’s the proof: in GMail, you now have the option to decide which addresses you email should get added to your main contacts list.

To access the feature, click “Contacts” in the main GMail menu, and select the My Contacts group., Now you can turn on or off the option to automatically add suggested contacts (anyone you email) to My Contacts. Turn it off, and it’s up to you to decide which contacts to move, and when.

Now, Google, about those other 24 suggestions…?

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Comments (6)

I have to say I like what they did with contacts. gmail still collects email address, but not in my contact list… and optionally adds those I frequently mail to my contacts. I like it.

josh — 10:04 AM on July 16, 2008 Reply
Im sure that android will be able to sync ur contacts with gmail,so they couldnt keep adding anyone. Its a very welcome change

Achilleas Tsoumitas — 11:39 AM on July 16, 2008 Reply
Really good news!.

For our tool KiGoo (http://www.getkigoo.com) now you will have less “real” contacts to manage from MS Outlook.

Ariel Di Stefano — 2:48 PM on July 16, 2008 Reply
Mike, this is not a big improvement. Actually, it doesn’t change anything in Contacts becoming any use to 99% of users (myself included). It may change things on the back-end, but for me?

Marcin Grodzicki — 4:32 AM on July 17, 2008 Reply
Marcin, it’s really useful if you sync your contacts anywhere else. It’s also useful if you’re the type that likes to keep your address book organized. I just switched my mother over to Gmail from Outlook and she’s constantly complaining about the address book and how no matter how much she tries to keep it organized, it becomes a mess a couple of days later. This will help her a lot.

Judi Sohn — 5:45 AM on July 17, 2008 Reply
Maybe it’s just me but I could sure use a better explanation of how this works. The only setting is whether or not to “Automatically move suggested contacts into My Contacts if I frequently email them.”

So, I have over 1000 suggested contacts and over 500 in ‘My Contacts.’ Are these two lists exclusive? Do I supposedly have over 500 email addresses that I email frequently? What qualifies as ‘frequently’?

Another thing that annoys me is that I have many, many duplicate entries. There is no easy way to combine these entries. It’s very time consuming to copy and paste each field from one entry to the other and then delete one. Especially with the duplicate email restriction.

Does any hard core Gmailer have some good advice?

physio — 9:54 PM on July 17, 2008 Reply