This post may sound a bit trivial but I thought I’d put it up anyway as not all of us Google experts!
Having been the strong opponent of everything Apple, I’ve recently started “shamelessly” changing my entire ecosystem to Apple as I’m fed up with Android launching a new version of its OS every fortnight and Samsung launching a new device every other day (at extortionate prices). I’m not even mentioning Microsoft as they have been struggling to keep up with the whole mobile war and haven’t yet fully figured out their Windows 8 mobile version. As such I got tired of using mediocre, incompatible pieces of technology to get my work done and decided to switch to Apple as they seem to have figured out how an ecosystem should work. To their credit, if you work within the limitations of the Apple ecosystem (and pay for every single thing), everything works seamlessly and synchronously. Well…. this is a topic for another post… Enough said!
One of the cool things about my new iPad is that it synchronises all my contacts, emails, tasks, calendar and appointments from Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and my company GroupWise (GW) servers while organising them neatly in one convenient location. I absolutely love the way it works so seamlessly. However, although Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo work really well, it sometimes does have problems in synchronising with the company GW server. Most of the time this is not a problem as I can use my Gmail account to send out urgent emails while I’m away. The problem though is when I can’t locate an email address from my GW address book as it is not available. This is never a problem with the Google address book. So I decided to find a solution to this irritating problem.
My solution was to upload all my official GW contacts into Google contacts. However, to do this manually would be torture as there are hundreds of contacts. Meddling around with the settings I figured out how to do it and here’s how:
On the GroupWise client
1. Go into Tools > Address Book on the top menu
2. Right click on the Novel GroupWise Address Book (or which ever address book you want to export)
3. Click Export Book
4. Select Save Type as vCard (*.VCF) file and save file on your computer
On Gmail
1. Change type from Gmail to Contacts (Top left hand side panel just underneath the Google logo)
2. Click on Import contacts (bottom of left hand side panel)
3. Browse and locate the .VCF file from your save location
4. Import
Now all your GW contacts are in Gmail. You just need to Sync your Gmail contacts with your Mac devices and you will have instant access to the whole list.
Again, I know that this is quite trivial but if you are using iPad, iPhone and a Mac then seeing all your contacts in one place would put a smile on your face.
