Gmail Contacts Gets New Fields, Better Syncing
June 18th, 2009 (1:00pm) Simon Mackie 6 CommentsTweet This (8)
Google announced that it has made some changes to Gmail Contacts, increasing the number of fields that it supports to be more in line with those commonly found in other contact managers.
Until these changes, announced yesterday, Gmail Contacts was quite limited in the number of fields that it supported. It didn’t have fields for “web site” or “birthday,” for example, both of which are commonly used in other email clients and contact managers. This meant that if you imported contacts from another program, Gmail would have to use the all-encompassing “notes” field for that extra information. That wasn’t ideal if you did a one-way import, but was especially problematic if you were trying to sync data between Gmail Contacts and another program or device that did support those extra fields. These new fields, as well as being useful in their own right, should make syncing much easier. Unfortunately, if you’ve already imported all your contacts and want to use these fields, you’ll need to wipe your Gmail Contacts and re-import them.
The additional fields have been available in standalone Google Contacts for over a month; it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to roll out these changes to Gmail Contacts, too.
Do you use Gmail Contacts as your primary contact manager?
Tags: Gmail, gmail contacts
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Guh, still no First/Last names?
I switched my google apps account to premier last week when they started offering sync. It really messed up the contacts in my phone because of no first/last names.
Interesting, I go to google.com/contacts and it’s logged in under my google apps account but none of my contacts from mail are there.
Nevermind, google.com/contacts works. I’m an idiot.
I use Apple Agenda for my contacts, and I sync this with my mobile phone and with gMail.
I also sync with Thunderbird in my laptop. If I modify a contact in the laptop, It’s sure that I will not see it right in Apple Agenda. I hope with this new upgrade I’ll be able to see my contacts correctly in everone of my computers.
How do I alphabetize my contacts, in my gmail acccount?
i give my great thank if you give some chance to contact…
I have imported all of my contacts from yahoo to gmail. I would like to send an email to everyone on my contact list to notify them of the change. WHERE TO I CLICK TO OPEN “CONTACTS” ON THE GMAIL HOME PAGE?