An interesting question came up the other day about gMail synchronization with Plaxo.
Synchronization is not possible because Google doesn’t provide an API for synching. (In fact, AFAIK, they only publicly provide Gmail import.) Without a synchronization API, there is no way to handle resolving issues where a contact is changed on both Gmail and Plaxo (or Plaxo-supported clients and devices). However, for around six months now, Gmail import has been supported.
The trick, which Joseph provided me, is to do the following.
- Go to https://www.plaxo.com/import?t=reg_gmail.
- Log into Plaxo Online if you haven’t already.
- Type in your gmail username and password and then click “Add contacts to my network.”
- A waiting animation will appear that will then direct you to a “spam” page which you should ignore. (The reason for this is because this page is hooked into of the new user registration flow, not designed for existing users.)
- Go to your contact list and all your gmail contacts should be in your default contacts folder.
I tried it and it works for the three people I have in my gMail contacts list.
How to I import my contacts from Plaxo to Gmail?
John,
I would sync Plaxo down to my desktop address book. And then export it as an outlook PST file or Mac OS X address book vcards. Then I’d use Google’s importers to get it into Gmail.
What you really want is sync not import. Currently this cannot be done (for reasons mentioned above), but that should be a feature that might be available in Plaxo in a couple months. 🙂