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