Android tip: Manage your contacts online via your Google account

When you activated your Android phone, you had to provide a “Google Account” to sync it to.  Generally, this is an @gmail.com address, but could actually be any google-provided account, for example, if you use Google Apps for your Domain, you can provide your own domain’s e-mail account and password.

Once you’ve set up the phone and tied it to your Google account, your mail & contacts from GMail will be automatically syncchronized with your phone, almost instantaneously.

So, what you should do is take your address book (in whatever format you currently have it) and import it into your GMail contacts.

1. Log in to GMail, using the account you’ve snyc’d with your phone
2. Click “contacts” on the left hand side.
3. Click “import” in the upper right hand corner.
4. Upload your export file, adding these contacts to a new group called something like “Imported Contacts”
5. Use the web interface to manually edit & add to any of the contacts, moving them to new groups if necessary.

Remember that it’s always possible to add & edit contacts via the GMail user interface — you don’t have to use your phone!  I find it much easier to use the web interface than the phone interface.

If the import process created duplicate contacts, then you can easily de-dupe them in the contacts UI.

1. Go to the contacts section of GMail
2. Type a search term that matches 2 or more duplicate entries. (If there is no such term, just skip this step)
3. Select the checkbox next to each item you’d like to merge together
4. There should be a link on the right that says “Merge these 2 contacts”   Click on it
5. You’ll be taken to the merged contact info.  Make sure it’s correct, and save the contact.

Remember that it’s also useful to create contacts in GMail even if people don’t have an e-mail address (for example, your grandparents) because it’ll show up on your phone and you can call them.

If you add an address to the contact, then it’ll be very easy to Navigate to their address using the builtin navigation system!

I even like creating contacts for things like my favorite restaurants and take-out places.  It makes them easy to call, and easy to navigate to!