Import Contacts without Export Contacts is Evil

[George Snelling, Seattle]

Google shipped contact import in July 2004. (See
<http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Gmail-Users/browse_thread/thread/a18560858d864737/4d58cdf3d590d954?q=export&rnum=1&hl=en#4d58cdf3d590d954>
.)

It's now April 2005 and there is still no way to export contacts. I'm
starting to view this as a violation of trust and a breaking of the
Google Golden Rule: Do no evil.

Between jobs I imported all my business contacts into my gmail account,
trusting Google that export was only a few weeks away if I needed them
back. I made many updates to those contacts over the past months, and
now that I've started a new job I need the info back for my new work
account. There's no way to get it. With 1300+ contacts parsing the
html pages by hand isn't a viable solution.

The code to do export is almost symmetrical with the import code
(except you have to do less error checking). After 8 months, I can
only conclude that someone on the business side has decided that they
want to make it easy to join gmail but hard to leave. That's Microsoft
think, not Google think. The entire gmail business model is founded on
us trusting the people who work at Google, and for the first time in my
experience with the company, I'm beginning to wonder if my trust was
misplaced.

Yes I've suggested the feature using the normal suggestion mechanism
and heard nothing. Although I love gmail, I'm suspending recommending
it to my friends and colleagues until I hear a firm commitment from the
Google folks to fix this by a specific date or provide a reasonable
workaround.

Chime in if you agree.

-George Snelling, Seattle

[Chimmer]

So where did you originally import your contacts from? You have over
1300 contacts and you don't keep a backup somewhere? Sorry, but it
looks like you just learned a valuable lesson.

[Caleb]

well, as i understand the email, he imported the contacts then edited them heavily:

I made many updates to those contacts over the past months, and
now that I've started a new job I need the info back for my new work
account.

I've done the same thing, and if i needed my contacts for another address, i'd be ticked off.  As it is, im fine with gmail.

--
Caleb
"May I ask you if you've considered all the possibilities that down might offer you?"  --The Elevator

[Greg Ritter]

On 4/20/05, George Snelling, Seattle <geor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's now April 2005 and there is still no way to export contacts.  I'm
> starting to view this as a violation of trust and a breaking of the
> Google Golden Rule:  Do no evil.

Did you see an export contacts feature in Gmail? Was there one there that was snatched away from you? No. While I agree that export contacts would be useful, Google never promised you an export contacts feature.

Seems to me that we don't have a case of Google committing a violation of trust, but of you committing of violation of common sense -- don't put data into a system unless you know (know, not hope) you'll be able to get your data out when (and how) you want it.

You didn't get screwed by Google; you screwed yourself.

--g

[Don]

But don't feel too bad about it... we all do dumb things once in a while.  The most common is not doing backups.

 

Don

[tgpra...@gmail.com]

I Agree with u . i also find this very annonying . The only thing to do
now is to suggest this feature to gmail. I have done this several times
no reply of course. I HOPE MANY OTHERS WILL DO THE SAME.

[Dougrs]

Everyone is right in their rebuttal... George S did something before
checking to see if he could get his information back.

One point he makes in his email are critical though:
1) Microsoft is supposed to be the company that does deliberately bad
acts to keep customers

My question is:
If Gmail offers the freedom of POP and SMTP... and they offer the
freedom of mail forwards, then why can't the offer us our contacts
back?

[Fanis Hatzidakis]

If you absolutely need to get your contact list outside of Gmail to
another email account, and you have so many contacts that manually
copying them is unrealistic, here's an idea:

1) compose an email and include everyone in your contact list
(Contacts page, All contacts tab, Select All from the bottom of the
page, Compose). Do not hit Send.

2) Now you have a list of all your contacts (albeit in a strange
format, it's atleast canonical. "Contact 1" <email address>, "Contact
2" <email address>, and so on. Cut them from the TO: field and paste
them in your favourite text editor, one preferably with regular
expressions support.

3) Start fixing the list up according to how your new email address'
client likes to import them.

I don't recall this being suggested before. If it was, my apologies to
the original author.
In any case, you have ways of working around the problem, until Gmail
does implement a direct contact export feature.

Fanis

[Ken_G]

Don wrote:
> But don't feel too bad about it... we all do dumb things once in a
while. The most common is not doing backups.
>
> Don

Don, you're the second person who has made a comment about backing up
the contacts. I don't get it .. how can you back them up if you can't
export them? What's *your* secret for backing up your Gmail contacts??

I've just started with Gmail. The inability to export contacts is one
of a number of missing features that will keep me from taking Gmail
seriously until/unless they are provided.

...ken...

[Caleb]

i disagree.  I think google has an obligation to allow us to export contacts if they give an option to import them, maybe not immediately, but its been a long time. To not implement that feature can be interpreted as an attempt to keep people from switching away from gmail.  Its not as if it would be that difficult for them to do, its just the opposite of import....

[Don]

My comment about not doing backups was a general example of the dumb things
we do... and not meant to be specific to the problem at hand.

As to actually backing up your gmail contacts list, the best I could find
was here....

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Discussion/browse_thread/thread/1fb3d7e9585a0e15/e5317162b54fb768?q=contacts+export&rnum=8#e5317162b54fb768

If that link is broken... http://tinyurl.com/e24pj

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken_G" <Ken.Ga...@gmail.com>
To: <Gmail...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 4:00 PM
Subject: [Gmail-Users] Re: Import Contacts without Export Contacts is Evil


>
>

[Fanis Hatzidakis]

Guys, did you not get my previous email in this thread on how to work
around the no-contacts-export problem? I see it on the website..
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Gmail-Users/msg/4a88195fa8e585df
I've yet to find a better solution to this, unless you want to use one
of the interface tools available (perl, python, etc) like this one:
http://search.cpan.org/~mincus/Mail-Webmail-Gmail-1.03.1/lib/Mail/Webmail/Gmail.pm#RETRIEVING_CONTACTS

Fanis

[Noam Nelke]

Regarding what Greg Ritter commented:

I would have to dissagree... When George said he finds it evil and that
it violates his trust, he doesn't mean they promised him something and
didn't keep their word. He means that he expected them to address this
issue (by the way, so did many others), and was disillusioned.

If Google would promise the feature and not deliver, that would be
really bad. But that doesn't mean that if they didn't promise - that
it's ok not to implement it. Gmail strives at giving customers what
they want. Not being able to export contacts is inconsistent with this
strategy. Especially when taking into consideration that most other
services do offer this ability.

Google has, over time, earned a lot of credit with me. This is why I
don't think that it really is evilness that is behind them not
implementing contact export. I don't know the reason, but for various
reasons I think they should do it as soon as possible:
1. It's usefull.
2. It's natural to think that the reason behind the lack of this option
is evil. I don't want this image to stick (I don't think the guys at
Google want it either).
3. Others have the feature, and it's unfair that migrating users from
Yahoo to Gmail can bring their contacts with them, but not vise-versa.
(some might say "this is exactly why they don't do it", but that doen't
fit in with the image I have of Google)

This was just my opinion,

Noam Nelke, Israel.

[Dougrs]

Fransis, Nice suggestion about extracting e-mail addresses. What
about all the other contact info, like phone numbers, addresses, etc?

[Dougrs]

Don, Good info, but again that example only extracts e-mail
addresses... some of us would like to use our gmail contacts to hold
more than e-mail... work & home contact info etc.

[joe]

My advice would be to keep your contacts in Yahoo. You can import and
export easily. If you have to make lots of changes, then you could
re-import them into Gmail. If you are only making a small change, like
an updated phone number, how difficult is it to make the change in two
places? Not all that hard. A pain? yes. Hard? no.

I'm not sure where this Google Golden Rule comes from. Is it a
community belief, or has anyone at Google said this?

At the end of the day, Google is still another company with bottom
lines and profit margins and shareholders.

[Caleb]

the 'golden rule' is thier motto