how to transfer contacts from iphone to gmail?

Have you enabled iCloud on your iPhone? You can make use of the iCloud to transfer contacts to gmail:

Step 1. Tap Settings > iCloud, sign in with your iCloud account. And swipe Contacts to ON.

Step 2. Open www.icloud.com on your computer via a web browser. After then click Contacts. On the left side, there is gear icon. Click it to export your contacts as a VCF file.

Step 3. Open Gmail on your computer. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts. Click the More actions dropdown menu and select Import.... Click the Choose File button and locate the VCF file you'd like to upload.

nohow

<Personal Information Edited by Host>

Hi Selena,

🙂Just found your post here by chance. Thank you so much for this effective way! iCloud is now a whole lot more useful

cheers

Tony

This export from iCloud to create Vcards no longer appears to be working. I have tried it in Google Chrome and IE 11 and nothing happens. Has anyone got a solution?

it is not working for me too...😢

I finally got it to work by downloading and installing Safari and then this enables export of iCloud contacts to vcf format.

However when editing a contact on my iPhone 6 with IOS 9.0.1 then this updates in icloud but editing in iCloud does not update in iPhone. There is also no refresh pull down for contacts in iOS 9 which there was in IOS 8 and there is in Calendars for example in IOS 9.

NOV 2016: I have an IPhone 6, and was having similar troubles. I won't be following up on this link but here's what I learned that might help u:

1. On my Win 10 PC:

The failed vCard Export issue must be Browser related.

I have Google Chrome and the newest Microsoft browser (Edge) installed. Within both browsers I can login to Icloud (where your IPhone Contacts info is saved,) navigate to my Icloud Contacts page, then click on the gear symbol in the lower left of the screen, Select All to highlight All Contacts, then select "Export vCard."

HOWEVER, that's as far as it goes in Chrome. It looks like it's doing something...but NOTHING happens. 😟

SOLUTION: Doing the same Export vCard function within my Edge browser results in a file successfully downloading, and at 100% my Downloads folder opens up with the vcard format file containing ALL my IPhone Contacts displayed. 🙂 You can then follow selenafromshenzhen's instructions above to upload that file into your Gmail.

This process gets all your CURRENT IPhone contacts to your Gmail.

2. Tcake, Sounds like you also want your phone to simultaneously sync any FUTURE NEW IPhone contact you add automatically to Gmail???

You probably have your default account within your IPhone currently set to ICloud. (When I looked mine was.) Try changing that default account to Gmail, so that any new Contacts you add will automatically be saved in your Gmail contact list.

Here's the link I found with the full instructions on how to do that. Good luck. 🙂

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6827158?answerId=27653229022#27653229022

One minor problem:

I discovered I now have DUPLICATES of a lot of contacts when I view them on my IPhone, (but not in Icloud.)

This is because the original IPhone contacts were stored on Icloud, and when you upload the vCards to Gmail you have basically made another copy of the contact without deleting the previous info stored on ICloud. Since your phone is probably syncing to Both contact lists (ICloud and Gmail) it will retrieve & show all info, even if the names and info are the same.

FIX:

On your IPhone 6:

Go into settings/ Mail, Contacts, Calendar/ ICloud. Scroll down to Contacts and turnoff the switch on the right to stop syncing ICloud contacts.

At this point, It will give you the option to delete old contacts from your IPhone. Only do this AFTER you have already backed up these contacts to vCard and imported them to your Gmail contacts first, or you will lose them!

Final Note:

I had a few straggler Duplicates that for whatever reason did not delete off my IPhone.

I just scrolled through my IPhone Contacts list and Manually deleted each Cloud copy of the contact whilst keeping the Gmail one.

In some cases it was hard to tell them apart, so from my PC I went on Gmail and added something under "note" for the contact in question, or you could add a "job title." When you turn off your Iphone and turn it back on you'll see this note/job title updated under the Google version of your contact info, so you know to delete the Other Contact entry for this person.

Hope this helps 🙂

Thanks heaps for this! So helpful.

Quick question - I want to turn iCloud back on for contacts after the duplicates were all deleted from the phone. But when I did that, the duplicates all came back. Is this because they're deleted from the phone but not from the cloud? Any suggestions? (Sorry I'm a bit clueless about this sort of thing!)

Thanks!

Hi,

Understand it's confusing. It is for me too. Let's try and help u break it down: 🙂

We never actually deleted the Contacts from the Icloud;

If u did the Export/Import steps above you would have only "copied" them to your Gmail.

So...if your phone is set to sync to Icloud Contacts AND Gmail Contacts...Now you would have TWO copies on your phone of each contact you sent to Gmail (one copy is syncing from Gmail, the other is syncing from ICloud.) That's why you have to turn your ICloud sync off.

If you have to turn your ICloud sync back on, YES, you're going to see all those duplicate contacts again. Not sure why you need to do that if you've already copied ALL your existing ICloud contacts to Gmail and set all Future contacts to only sync with Gmail. I would suggest Picking One Or the Other for all your contact database, but I'M Not An Expert.

The only option I can think of if you Have to turn ICloud sync back on:

You'll have to manually delete every contact you don't want off ICloud. That contact version should then disappear off your phone, as long as your phone is still set to sync with ICloud too. (Probably easiest to log directly into ICloud webpage from a PC/Mac and delete from there. That way you don't risk accidentally deleting the GMail synced version of that contact if you're trying to do it from your phone.)

IF you had previously uploaded that contact info to your Gmail, AND your phone is still synced to Gmail Contacts...you should still see just ONE entry for that name (the one synced from GMail Contacts) AFTER you delete the ICloud version.

If you have alot of ICloud Contact entries I could see this being a Huuuuuge, painful process, which is why I just turned my ICloud contact sync off and had all future Contact syncs go to Gmail instead.

Cheers

Ok, I understand now! I guess I just wanted iCloud sync to be turned on so that the new contacts I create on the phone can be accessed on my other devices that are linked to iCloud. But I suppose if I set up the other devices to sync with Gmail, then it has the same effect as using iCloud. (I definitely don't want to delete all the duplicates manually!)

Thanks so much again. 🙂

You're very welcome! Glad I could help 🙂

I tried using Microsoft Edge browser to open icloud.com but when I go to Contacts, click on gear in lower left corner, select all and then click on Export vCard nothing seems to happen. I am on Windows 10. Not sure if I am doing something wrong or not. I did try and look in the Downloads file area but there were no new files. Any ideas?