Import GMail Contacts into MS Outlook

To import Gmail contacts into Outlook.

The combination of Outlook 2010 and Gmail seems to be a good one.
Outlook 2010 does a great job of synchronising with my Gmail account. It automatically configures the settings correctly when given login credentials, mirrors the folder structure of gmail. It also gets past the restrictions on outbound mail when I am on someone else's ISP connection which had previously rendered Outlook useless.

Step by step instructions on how to import Google contacts into Outlook

1. Go to Contacts on your Gmail accout
2. Look for the more actions button (its at the footer of the contacts page for me as I write this)
3. Choose Export
4. You can choose to export all contacts or a specific group
5. Also, choose Outlook CSV as the specific type
6. Choose the location on your local system for the csv file and click Export
7. In MS Outlook, go to File\Open on the menu
8. Select import
9. Select Import from another program or file
10. Choose Comma Separated Values (Windows)
11. Browse to the CSV file you created in step 6
12. Select a destination folder - set this to Contacts
13. Click Next and then Finish to complete

Among other things I have done through my company Kandy Solutions is to create custom Outlook add-ins, and to implement other solutions using MS Offices, such as the automation of Word and Excel, creating automatic form letters based on database entries.

Creating Microsoft Outlook 2007 Add-Ins with Visual Studio 2008

From the 2008 version of Visual Studio, VSTO (Visual Studio Tools For Office) was included as started in all versions from Professional upwards. Previously it had been a separate add-in, with limited functionality in the pro version of Visual Studio.

To create an add in for Outlook 2007;
1) Oen visual studio 2008, go to File\New Project
2) From the project tree Choose Visual Basic\Office 2007\Outlook Add In

3)

4) To add an event handler, select Application from the drop down on the left, which lists elements of the class. Then select the event from the event list on the right.

5) Take as an example, ItemSend event

6) Add some code to the item event

7) Run the project in the usual Visual Studio way, Outlook will start, and the add in will be installed, so if you try to send an email message, your event will fire.

8) One great thing here is that you can set breakpoints within the code in Visual Studio, and do the usual debugging, while events are being fired in Outlook. This is an advance over the VBA methods of older versions of Outlook.

9) To remove the add-in from Outlook during the development stage: in Visual Studio Debug: Clean