I went through all the contacts I had in GMail Contacts this weekend.
(I got a G1 phone. It had to be done.)
I deleted all the email addresses of people I don’t know, who ended up in there from “reply alls” or similar. That took it down from nine hundred and change to about three hundred contacts.
I also deleted people I’m not likely to call or email in the future, which took it down to 280. This included some work contacts, like vendors, since I keep those contacts on my work phone & have no need for duplicates in my personal contacts.
And then, finally, I merged all the duplicate entries, and updated them with the phone numbers and addresses from my BlackBerry address book. The end result was 209 contacts. 80 of which show up in my Contact List on my new phone.
And there we go – I am all organized.
BTW, for those of you who want to know why I got a G1 instead of another BlackBerry, it’s because T-Mobile has two choices for those of us who want the 3G network. It’s either the G1, or the Dash. I want to stay away from Windows Mobile, so that left the Google phone. Or switching to Verizon. I like the service & the price I get from T-Mobile (I have loyalty unlimited minutes), plus both my husband and my mom are on the same carrier, so we all get free minutes to each other. Therefore, I had to “settle” for a G1, which, although not universally well reviewed, is still a major improvement over my clunky, trackwheeled (not even trackball!) BlackBerry.
Oh, and Gmail Contacts “Merge these contacts” function is PURE GENIUS. I love that Google recognized that the system seems to register each individual email address as a separate person, and gave an easy way to fix it.
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