Google Contacts in Outlook

Feb 10

JeffTech No Comments

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Google has licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync, allow­ing us to sync Google Cal­en­dar and Con­tacts directly with an iPhone or Win­dows Mobile device. HOORAY! If you’re an Out­look user for what­ever reason (mine is because I have years of archived Out­look emails that I need to keep search­able), and you use Google Cal­en­dar and Con­tacts, you’re also most likely aware that there are few if any good, free util­i­ties for bi-​directional sync­ing of con­tacts between Google and Out­look. Why Google doesn’t include con­tact sync in their otherwise-​useful Google Cal­en­dar Sync I have no idea.

So instead of trying to sync Out­look con­tacts with Google, I decided to aban­don using Out­look for con­tact man­age­ment and instead switch to Google Con­tacts so I can take advan­tage of the new ActiveSync option. But now I have to open up and log into Gmail to find con­tacts while every­thing else is in Out­look! That’s not going to work. Instead, I’m going to view my Google Con­tacts directly from Outlook.

How to View Google Contacts Directly from Outlook

There are two hacks at work here. The first one is view­ing Google Con­tacts as a stand­alone site instead of through Gmail. That one comes from the good folks at Life​hacker.com. The second is con­fig­ur­ing the Out­look Con­tacts drawer in the main nav­i­ga­tion pane to point to a URL instead of the stan­dard con­tacts view.

All of the steps take place in Out­look, and this should work in 2003 and 2007 (I’m using 2007).

  1. Click on the Con­tacts drawer
    contact_drawer
  2. Go to File > Folder > Prop­er­ties for “Contacts”…
  3. Click the “Home Page” tab in the new dialog box
  4. In the “Address” field, type http://​www.​google.com and check the “Show home page by default for this folder” box. Click OK. The main Google web page should appear within Out­look.
    outlook_mod_1
  5. Log into Google. Be sure to check “Stay signed in.”
    google_login
  6. Go back to File > Folder > Prop­er­ties for “Con­tacts”… and click the “Home Page” tab
  7. Enter the fol­low­ing URL into the “Address” field: https://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager — and click OK
    outlook_mod_2

And that should do it! You’re now able to manage your Google Con­tacts directly from Out­look. The only loss of Out­look func­tion­al­ity I can think of with this trick is the abil­ity to create a new con­tact directly from an Out­look email. If you can think of other issues, please leave a comment.

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