Update: Megan left a helpful comment on creating a custom CSV that works even better than my approach.
My mother made the big switch today. She left AOL and jumped onto DSL. As I was setting up her connection, she asked me to move her address book from her AOL account to her new Gmail email address. It turns out, there’s no way to do it, well, until I made a way.
The Gmail Help page says:
AOL doesn’t have the functionality to export your address book, so you’ll have to create a custom CSV file if you use this service.
That’s no help, what about just exporting the AOL address book period. Well, I found some iffy solutions that require downloading a 3rd party software, but that seemed too difficult. So, I came up with an easier method.
- In AOL, make a new Group that contains all the emails you want to export.
- Send an email to that group; Carbon Copy (CC) your new Gmail address. I included a quick blurb that the email address would be changing, etc.
- Leave AOL, and open up Gmail. You should see the email you just sent in your inbox.
- Reply All on that email. I mentioned something like, “Hi, just wanted to send you all another email from my new account.”
- You’re done. Gmail automatically puts everyone who you email in your contacts. You just emailed everyone on your list.
Now, this method is only going to get the emails out. I’m not sure if AOL stores phone numbers, etc. My mother’s account also didn’t get the names associated with the emails. This may have been how she had set it up.
May 21st, 2005 at 10:54 am
Nicnolas, absolutly brilliant. Of course I would not expect anything different from my son.
Father
May 21st, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Thanks, dad… But it really wasn’t that big of a deal. Plus, there might even be better ways to do it.
June 13th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Good stuff. My wife’s mother is looking to do the same thing, and this makes so much sense since she’ll need to update everyone with the new address anyway.
August 19th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
As for a simpler way using your idea-to avoid sending two emails and to give your contacts only the gmail one to reply to to avoid confusion, I would suggest setting the email up in aol, but instead of actually sending it just cut and paste your recipient list into gmail, then send just the one from there.
If for some reason the paste option doesn’t come up when you right click in gmail as I’ve seen in some cases, just use the “Ctrl+V” keyboard shortcut.
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:49 am
Well, I tried your solution re moving my AOL address book to Gmail and all I got when I hit send was that an error had occurred and it wouldn’t send. No other explanation. I hate AOL.
July 7th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
I was trying to figure out how to do this since I’ve never used AOL & my mom was trying to quit them.. Friggin’ brilliant ! I never would have thought of that.. My Mom has all her AOL contacts & pays $30 less a month..
Great job
September 13th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Hi,
Here is another solution where you do not need to send email AT ALL.
1)in AOL Communicator, export your contacts in AOL’s ldif format file.
2)in Thunderbird, import your contacts in text format.
3)in Thunderbird, export your contacts in csv format.
4)in Gmail, import your contacts in csv format.
a+, =)
-=Finiderire=-
September 22nd, 2007 at 7:21 am
Thanks for that. This fix was the first search result in Google when I searched the phrase “how to export contacts from aol email”. Very helpful.
Cheers,
Rob
September 30th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Did not work with Vista
July 23rd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Hey — try transferring your contacts into yahoo — it has a tool that will do it!
August 5th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
brilliant guys. thank you. Emma
September 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Yahoo worked brilliantly — I moved all my contacts WITH personal information into GMAIL.
AOL? I am creating an email of email addresses.
I am considering using PLAXO, too. I bet it has an export to CSV feature.
I have 2 GMAIL accounts 1) personal and 2) work / career management, and professional networking. I MERGE my GMAIL calendars together.. so I can see what I am doing on any given day if I am in either account.
September 19th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Thank you so much!
I had to do this for my mother and I thought it was going to be a nightmare and your solution made it so easy.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Another concerned son has rescued his mother from AOL. Thanks for the insight.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Very Clever. I am doing this for my dad, who’s last day on aol is tomorrow and is now on gmail. I personally have gmail and as soon as I read this I said “Wow, that’s pretty clever. That’s exactly right. You CAN do that because as soon as you send a reply gmail will automatically place them in your contacts.
October 25th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Alternate method: set up a new “list” in AOL with all the names that you want to transfer to Gmail. Before hitting the “create” button, copy and paste all the addresses into a new Gmail message. Send the email to everyone, announcing your new address, and you will have all of the addresses saved in Gmail!
October 28th, 2008 at 9:30 am
thanks. i’ve been trying to convert my aol address book to my gmail to use. my son sent me your link. are’t sons wonderful.
it worked easily, just had to give gmail a little while to add the list of contacts.
October 28th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
In AOL, make a new Group that contains all the emails you want to export. (Sorry, how do you do this?=mAKE A NEW GROUP, DID YOU MEAN MAKE A NEW fOLDER?)
Send an email to that group; Carbon Copy (CC)
can you explain this, “sending an email to that new group?)
thx,
Ed
October 28th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
This is a follow up, my intention is to move ALL my AOL Emails that are now in a saved mail folder (in aol).. I know how to send an email to Gmail with all my aol emails carbon coped, but my real problem is to MOVE all emails from my aol account –John, the email above is unclear on MOVING EMAILS not AOL stored Email adresses or contacts..
Thx,
ED
November 17th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Huge thanks! I just changed my mom’s account from AOL and this was fantastically easy!!
January 12th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
How do I move my email addresses in AOL to Evite without having to type each one in? Many thanks to anyone who can help.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:30 am
Thanks for this elegant and easy solution.
How about this — is there a keystroke sequence to bring you to the Windows desktop?
January 25th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Communicator is no longer available at AOL. I wonder why? I just used Yahoo mail to import my wife’s contacts in just a matter of seconds. Just need to import them to gmail. Official AOL method was to print out contacts and re-enter by hand. You got to love AOL!
February 12th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
This is really great. I was look everywhere online to find a way to import my contacts into gmail from AOL, and you provided a simple, but useful way to do it. Good work!
March 13th, 2009 at 9:48 am
Thanks, Nicholas; you inspired my boyfriend and me to try this.
In the process, we discovered that sending an e-mail to everyone on his aol list would mean that all the recipients would see each other’s e-mail addresses. We experimented with using “bcc” to prevent this, but that didn’t carry the addresses into Contacts, not too surprisingly.
SO we came up with a way for all of you out there who might want to protect the privacy of your e-mail friends (and/or who don’t want to put them through scrolling down through a list of 200 recipients to get to the message).
We created a list on aol (couldn’t find a “group” … maybe it has to do with what version of aol you have), then pretended we were sending a message, then just cut and pasted the list into Microsoft Word. Then used the “replace all” function to replace all the commas with paragraph marks. Then we could easily cut and paste this into a Microsoft Excel file. So at that point the list of 197 names was all in single file in column A, occupying 197 rows. We inserted a row at Row 1 and added a header–that is key. Then we were able to “SAVE AS” a CSV file. Then closed it, opened Gmail, and the import was very easy.
Hope this helps someone with similar concerns.
Thanks, Nicholas, fir the inspiration; love your sense of humor too.
March 13th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Hey Megan, that’s probably the best approach I’ve seen yet. Glad it worked out for you.
March 14th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Megan (or Nicholas or anyone else that can offer help)–What do you put in the header of the CSV file? I’m getting an error message when I try to import the CSV file into Gmail. It says: Sorry, we could not recognize the file format. The only thing I can figure is that I did something wrong at your “that is key” step.
March 18th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
We were receiving the same error message as M&D. Check out the Gmail help on Creating and editing CSV files to help find a solution: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=12119. We added a header row and then two blank columns, one for First Name and one for Last Name. The header of the email column needs Email Address as the column apparently. Hope this helps.
March 22nd, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Thanks, Drew! One easy fix, and it worked like a charm.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Megan, I made a list in AOL, I copied it to Word, replaced all commas with paragraph marks,opened an Excel spread sheet, copied and pasted it to Excel and got a long list that went across column “A”, and not down. What did I do wrong?
April 7th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Brooks, when you have the find and replace all box up, click the more tab at the bottom. then open up the special tab and use the paragraph mark in that pop up list.
April 14th, 2009 at 2:05 am
Seems everybody is doing this little help service for their mothers!? Well, at least that means that less adn less people (and mothers) will beusing shitty AOL in the future!
Worked perfectly fine! My mother’s all hooked up on gmail by now…
THANKS A LOT GUYS
April 26th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
simple and free way of exporting your aol address book:
I’ve spent nearly 4 hours trying to figure out some way to trasfer contacts from aol to outlook but aol simply doesn’t give u this option!!!!!
I suggest this was made to discourage people from switching from Aol proprietary system which became just a bunch of crapware.
People mentioned these solutions online:
1) aol communicator - which how I found out was discontinued and i wasn’t able to find it anywhere online.
2) aolsync outlook plugin - simply didn’t work for me.:( Throws an error when I tried to sync. Later someone mentioned that this service no longer works two-ways. - it only sync outlook contacts into aol. Gee - i wonder why?
3) aoleave.com - discontinued. mentions aol 6.0 software on that website
4) epreserver.com - has a software that transfers everything from aol account - though it’s like 25 bucks which i had absolutely no intention to pay.
And finally - HERE IS HOW TO BACK UP YOUR AOL ADDRESS BOOK FOR FREE! :))
1) Go to Plaxo.com website and sign up - it’s free.
plaxo.com - it’s sort of universal online address book and social networking site. I’ve never heard of it before but I think I’ll definitely use it in the future cuz it proved to be the only simple and FREE way of transferring aol contacts:)
2) During the sign up process it’ll ask you to add contacts from various services like gmail or aim/aol. - so - just enter your aol credentials.
It might ask u if u would like to send invitation to the people in ur address book - just click on skip when that happens.
3) When u pass setup process - click on “More” and than select “Address book”. At this point you should see all aol contacts over there. (luv u plaxo:)
4)Scroll down to the veryy bottom of the page and click on “+ Add sync points”. “Sync wizard” window will popup.
5) click on the option that says export address book (alternatively plaxo offers plugin for automatic sync with ms outlook:) - and it’s free)
6)From the drop down list u can either select .csv or .ldif or .vcf format. I’ve just selected .csv because i was transferring the address book into MS outlook.
That’s it - just save that .csv file on ur desktop and import it into your program of choice.
Mission accomplished.
P.S> plaxo.com kick’s ass. I was so f**cking happy to find it cuz otherwise - I’d have to manually transfer 450 contacts.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Aweseome. Thank you SO much. The other ways were so cumbersome. This was slick and took 10 minutes!
June 15th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi, Thanks for the tips.
I found your solution and started to use Pierre’s alternate solution. I altered it when exporting my mom’s contacts to her outlook folder on her computer (6/15/2009).
Alternate method: set up a new “list” in AOL with all the names that you want to transfer to Gmail.
Before hitting the “create” button, copy all the addresses using the [ctrl] [C] buttons.
Then compose a message in the program you are exporting to (outlook in this case) and paste all the addresses into the cc field using the [ctrl] [V] buttons.
Then add each to your contact and save. In Outlook you click on the radio button and arrow that will appear if you hover to the left of the name, then select the add/save to contacts selection.
Delete the fake email without sending it.
Hope this helps someone else too.
Briget
July 12th, 2009 at 12:08 am
OK… here’s the simplest of all…
1) Click on Contacts
2) Select the Print All Contacts option
3) This will open a new window with all your contact information. Select all the text then copy and paste into Excel or Word to create a CSV file.
Hope this helps.
August 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Great thread. I’m trying to help my dad get off AOL and this was very helpful. So, its not just mom’s you guys are helping…
anyone have any similar slick way for getting favorites into a format recognized by IE?
Thanks…
Mike
August 24th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I exported addresses from AOL to GMail and now the gmail account is stalled…it continues to say “william.ibbs@gmail.com is loading”.
How do I get this to stop?
August 30th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Or you could use this: http://recyclinggroup.org/Utilities/OpenInviter/ExportContacts.htm.
Made it today :-), so hopefully it will work fine. It exports the contacts to csv, using OpenInviter.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
Thanks, Megan! Just got my mother-in-law out of AOL hell. FINALLY.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:36 am
Hey, I discovered an event EASIER way! Just go to SETTINGS in your gmail acount click the tab that says ACCOUNTS AND IMPORTS click IMPORT FROM ANOTHER ADDRESS and then imput the email address and password, it will ask you what you want to import, such as emails, address book…
and presto! I now have all of my emails and contacts from my AOL account in my GMAIL account. When i type in an email address or name, the email pops up. Works the best!
September 5th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
You are awesome. Thank you so much!!!!
September 16th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Could someone create a more detailed way to transfer the AOL contacts to gmail? (As in step-by-step for the hopeless?) Many thanks!
October 19th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
For Gmail users using Gmail’s built in switcheroo function is best. For anyone else who needs to export AOL contacts, here’s the best way I’ve found: When accessing AOL mail via their website (www.aol.com) there’s an option to export your contacts now. Yay! This works best in a third party browser, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. Sign into your account, and on the left hand side of the page where it’s got your New Mail, Old Mail, etc. You’ll see your Contacts. Click on that, and towards the top of the page (right underneath an ad) you’ll see a toolbar that has export on it. Click there, and export it wherever you like. Piece of cake!
November 7th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
How can I import my old aol groups into new yahoo categories without having to enter all the addresses?
December 13th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Thank you so much! This is truly amazing!
December 18th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
OK this IS the easiest way, forgive me if it was already mentioned.
1.Login to your GMail account
2.Click “settings” (for me it was at the top right of the page)
3.Click on the “Accounts and Import” tab.
4.A window pops up, type in your AOL email address example: yourusername@aol.com
5.The next window will ask for your AOL password.
6.The next windows asks what you want to import such as: contacts, emails, etc…
7.There is a message that says it make take up to 2 days to import all your emails, so be patient.
December 18th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
1. Login to your AOL mail account on the web by going to http://www.aol.com using Internet Explorer or Firefox.
2. Click on contacts somewhere on the lower left side of the page.
3. Click the select all box at the top left of the contact list.
4. Click the Export button.
5. Select the format to save the contact list in example: .CSV
6.Choose where to save the file (maybe to your desktop so it’s easy to find.
7. Done!
March 1st, 2010 at 5:14 am
I did it with Plaxo.It was a doddle.
March 16th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
[...] Plaxo.com offers a service for moving your AOL Address Book. Just follow the steps that one person has outlined here. [...]
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:01 am
AMAZING, thank you! I am doing this for my boss, who is back and forth between AOL and outlook… just saved me so much time!
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