Tuesday, June 17, 2008

wonder why gmail contacts regressed

Generally Google products improve over time, but for some reason, the contacts browser in Gmail seems to have regressed very badly. So many features broken in the new version whose only advantage seems to be eye-candy:
  • Search doesn't match for any field other than contact name
  • Does not allow deleting of more than 20 contacts at a time
  • Import is more finicky - csv files which work with old version don't work with new version!
Thank God the Google team have retained the "Older version" link at least! But I hope the GMail team cleans up the contacts mess. Reason for ranting right now is that I'm trying to import a csv file, with field headers Name, Email Address, Phone - but GMail old version insists on making a Notes field and putting Phone: 9999999 there. New version refuses to import at all. Will try making a csv file exactly like the "GMail csv export" which Gmail exports.
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1 comment:

  1. rampyJune 30, 2008 9:31 AM

    I doubt, it allows deleting only 20contacts at one time...about contacts .csv, Yes, it does work out if entered in the same format...as you mentioned in your second post...

    There was problem with the export from Google Apps domain. It was not in a correct format. I had to take the export from normal gmail and have a look at its format. Change format of AppsContacts.csv to GmailContacts.csv and then it got imported correctly into my Gmail.


    One thing, I thought Google should have done (as it is known to use a lot of creativity and brain to improve end-users experience with their products)...when they integrated GTalk with Orkut, they imported only the mail id of that individual along with the display name. They should even picked up the fields which are to be currently entered manually. Some fields like: Mobile No, Address, etc.

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