As you probably know, Google’s GMail is all the rage (and has been for the past few years). But as the service continues to expand, more and more people are leaving AOL and using the Google Gmail email.
The one drawback — of course — is that all of your AOL email address contacts are stored on your AOL account and need to be downloaded and converted to Gmail.
Have no fear – converting your AOL email address book to Google is pretty easy.
How to Convert your AOL Email Address Book to Google Gmail
- Log in to AOL.
- Search for keyword “Communicator” and download AOL’s stand alone email client.
- Launch Communicator and access the Address Book.
- Select “All Contacts” from the Catorgories list in the Address Book.
- From the FILE menu, select EXPORT.
- Save the exported address in an easily accessible location (ie Desktop) as “aol-list”. You know have an LDIF export of all of you AOL email contacts.
- Download and install the free Thunderbird email client. We will use this program to convert your “aol-list” to a format that Gmail can accept.
- Run the Thunderbird program. Ignore the option to import email settings from other programs.
- Within Thunderbird, access the TOOLS menu and select ADDRESS BOOK.
- From the Thunderbird address book, access the TOOLS menu and select IMPORT.
- Select your “aol-list” file and Thunderbird will import your AOL email list as a new address book.
- In Thunderbird, highlight your new address book. Access the TOOLS menu and select EXPORT.
- In the export options, select COMMA SEPERATED VALUE (CSV) as the export format and save the file as “tbird-list”. You now have your original address book in a format that Gmail can understand.
- Log in to Gmail and click on the Contacts link (on the left hand side of the screen). Select ADD CONTACT to access the Gmail contact editor.
- Follow the on screen directions to IMPORT ADDRESSES FROM A CSV FILE.
- Upload your “tbird-list” file to Gmail.
That’s it! You know have your AOL email address book in Google’s Gmail.
Note: If your CSV import fails within Gmail, don’t worry. Simply open your “tbird-list.csv” file in any spreadsheet program and add one row to the top of the spreadsheet that declares each column (ex: name, email, etc). Now repeat the import within Gmail. For more information, see Gmail’s import help.
Note: Much of this comes from this very helpful posts throughout the web. I have tried to compile them as accurately as possible, since there are very few resources that explain how to download and convert your AOL email address book to Google’s Gmail. I hope this is a help to those in need.