Transferring contacts to a Google account

[davidkayla]

Hi,
Come someone please help me transfer my iphone contacts to a google account please? I am just looking for some high level information and do not want a step by step guide.

I have ios 8.1.2 and have some existing contacts.

Under settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars I assume I have to set up a Gmail account but do I also have to click on Personal Contacts and specify Carddav information?

There is an existing Personal Contacts account and I want to delete it but I get the warning that all of my contacts will be deleted. Presumably it will only delete a copy of my contacts that have been linked to a carddav account?

As you can see, I am confused.
Regards,
David.

 

[Weaselboy]

Go to the app store and search for "vcard export". There are some free apps there that will let you export all your iPhone contacts to one VCARD file. Now go to gmail.com on your computer and import that vcard file into your gmail contacts. Then setup gmail CardDAV on the phone following Googles instructions.

 

[davidkayla]

Thanks for responding.

That is more of a manual way to transfer over the contacts. Don't get me wrong, it is probably the way I will do it in the end.

I just want to set up the carddav information first to see what that does. Are you able to comment on my second query about deleting an existing 'Personal Details' account (containing the carddav info)? It warns me that it is going to delete all of my existing contacts.

d.

 

[davidkayla]

Hi,
For those of you who are interested I did transfer my contacts via a vcard file to gmail and that worked well. So thanks for that suggestion.

As far as I can see I am getting full synchronization from GMail contacts to iphone contacts by just creating a gmail account under Mail, Contacts.... The contact group that the iphone stores the contacts under is 'Gmail'. Interestingly I deleted all other groups in the contact app and the synchronization still appears to be working. At the moment I am not sure I need the Personal Contact/Carddav account. I didn't know what that was for anyway.

d.

 

[mattopotamus]

Hi,
For those of you who are interested I did transfer my contacts via a vcard file to gmail and that worked well. So thanks for that suggestion.

As far as I can see I am getting full synchronization from GMail contacts to iphone contacts by just creating a gmail account under Mail, Contacts.... The contact group that the iphone stores the contacts under is 'Gmail'. Interestingly I deleted all other groups in the contact app and the synchronization still appears to be working. At the moment I am not sure I need the Personal Contact/Carddav account. I didn't know what that was for anyway.

d.

cardDAV is no longer needed. Like you said, you can add contacts under the default google account set up. You use to not be able to add contact/calenders under that setting though and had to go through cardDAV and calDAV if you used gmail.

I think IOS 7 added gmail calendar and contacts as a default option.