I discovered that directly importing from GMail to Thunderbird (hereinafter TB) loses all important information and leaves the address-book non-functional. So I thought I’d write here the way I got it working.
- In your google account, goto Contacts.
- Click on the “Export” link on the top right side of the box.
- Export it in “Outlook CSV” format and save the file to a desirable location.
- Open Microsoft Outlook (2007 in my case) and goto File -> Import and Export.
- Make sure “Import from another program or file” is highlighted and click “Next”
- Select “Comma separated values (Windows)” and click “Next”
- Select the downloaded file and click “Next”
- In the “Select destination folder” area, highlight the “Contacts” entry and click “Next”
- Click the “Finish button”. Outlook will import all contact, please wait while it does that.
- Once finished, close Outlook and launch Thunderbird.
- In the Thunderbird window, goto Tools -> Import
- Select “Address Books” option and click “Next”
- Select “Outlook” from the menu and click “Next”
- Click the “Finish” button and you’re done!
That should be all. This is just a 10 minute procedure that will import all your Google mail contacts to Thunderbird. Enjoy!