Hi all - I've been tooling around tonight to prep for my migration to the Pre and I discovered something that might be important for those like me who currently use outlook as the primary contacts database... but who would like to move to Google.
I found that importing the Outlook CSV file of my 850-entry Contacts database (available under outlook's Import / Export function) though GMail Contacts did not yield the same results as importing it through
http://www.google.com/contacts (which is the standalone - non-Gmail - contacts app recently discussed here:
http://www.precentral.net/google-con...-without-gmail)
Anyway, a few of the key differences I noted at this late hour are somewhat important for me (or at least would save me significant time later on). Using the standalone app allowed me to
- Import my Outlook Contact Categories as Google Contact Groups
- Import Outlook's Birthday and Anniversary Fields into those specific fields in Google Contacts
Anyway, I know neither of those things are earth shattering, but I figured it's better to have more fields map properly through the export / import process than lose information during the transfer. Plus, I imagine there will soon be automated reminders in GCal for those B-day and Anniversary dates in your contacts.
Another note is that, once the import has been completed, the categories (group lists in Google Contacts) is also shown when you use the Contacts feature within GMail, however, the special fields (BDay and Anniv is my limited current understanding) do NOT show up when reviewing / editing your contacts from within GMail. However the data is not lost, you just have to use
http://www.google.com/contacts if you want to see / edit this info. I'm sure this is just due to the "Beta" nature of the Google Contacts feature and incomplete synchronization between the contacts code withing GMail and the standalone app.