GregLedet.net Adventures in networking, security, and other things

Uploading multiple vCards to Google Contacts

As you can see from my last post, I've been messing around with my contacts list as of late.  I'm trying to get as much info on these people as possible.  Stuff like their birthdays and anniversaries, mailing addresses, emails, phone numbers, etc.  While I'm putting all of this together, I'm also adding pictures for everyone on their vCard; a head shot for friends and the company logo for business contacts.  Since I'm using Outlook 2007 as my main mail program, it's pretty easy to get all of this stuff in one place.  The only problem I was running across was, like I said in the last post, Google was screwing with my contacts list.  First off, you can only import 2 types of files to Google; a vCard file and a CSV.  You can't upload a .pst file which would contain all of my contacts' pictures.  The CSV file does move all the info I want except the pictures, and the vCard file moves everything, but you have to do it one at a time... or do you?

Click on the business card for the full vCard.

For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, this is what a Business card vCard looks like in Outlook if I were to email it to you.  It's a .vcf file and contains all kinds of rich information on the back end.  There's a link under the picture for you to download a full vCard for the president.  There's also tons of other formats out there to store your contacts; everything from simple text files all the way to QR codes.  If you have an app on your phone that does 3D barcodes, snap a pic of that one and you'll get the same info that's in the vCard.

Now, back to what I was originally talking about.  Seeing as I want all that rich information in my contacts and I want to import them into Google, I need to use a vCard.  I don't want to have to upload 239 individual files, so this is what I'm going to do.

1. Go to your contacts in Outlook and highlight them all (ctrl-A). Right click and "Send Full Contact" then "In Internet Format (vCard)".  Depending on how many contacts you have, you may have to split them up into groups.  I did...
2. An email should pop up with a bunch of attachments.  Send that email to yourself.
3. From the email you just sent to yourself, highlight all the attachments, right-click, save as. Save them somewhere easy to access.
4. Open up a command line. (Windows Key + R, then type "cmd" and press OK)
5. Navigate to the folder where you saved the contacts.  I saved them in C:\contacts, so we'll use that.
6. The command to type from the directory you have saved your contacts is:
   copy   /B   *.vcf   all_contacts.vcf
7. This will create a file in that directory called "all_contacts.vcf".  In that file will be the vCards of all of your contacts.
8. Now you just go to Google.com/contacts, click "Import" on the right side of the page, and upload that file!

It's pretty easy when you think about it.  I don't know of any way to do this from the GUI, so you're going to have to use the command line.  Once you have everything uploaded to Google Contacts, you should be set.  All you pictures and information should have been transferred and now you have a full backup of your contacts list should your computer crash!  I also use the same contacts list on my Windows Mobile phone, so I have multiple backups of my contacts list.  I'll never have to run around trying to rebuild it after losing my phone again!!!

-Greg