Importing data from Gmail

Learn how to import your contacts from Gmail

Overview

What does importing contacts mean?
Importing contacts is how you can mass-load your contacts into Salesforce CRM.

Why is importing your contacts important? 
Importing contacts helps get all your contacts into your Salesforce CRM application in minutes so you can spend your time growing your business instead of entering phone numbers and email addresses.

Export your contacts from Gmail

1. Log in to your Gmail account.
2. Click Contacts on the left side of the page under your Inbox and Trash links.
3. Click Export on the right side of the page.
4. Choose the Contact list to export.
5. Choose “Outlook’s CSV format (for importing into Outlook or other applications)”
6. Click Export.
7. Click Save to Disk and then click OK. If a window pops up, you should save the file to your desktop.

NOTE: If you want to import contacts from multiple users, follow the additional steps below. If you are only importing contacts for one user, proceed to the next section.

8. Repeat Steps 1–7 to export the contacts for all users whose contacts you want to import into Salesforce CRM.
9. Merge all files into a single CSV file using Excel or a similar application.
10. Review your data for accuracy.
11. Add a column titled Record Owner and add the user’s Salesforce CRM username to this field in the format jsmith@acme.com or Joe Smith. This step ensures that each user’s data is correctly owned by the user in Salesforce CRM. 
    NOTE: All users named in the CSV file must be created in Salesforce CRM before importing.
12. Save file and proceed to the next section.

Import your contacts to Salesforce CRM

1. Log in to Salesforce CRM.
2. Click the Contacts tab.
3. Click the Import My Accounts & Contacts link in the Tools section.
4. Click Start the Import Wizard.
5. Select Other Data Source from the radial dial and then click Next.
6. Click the Browse or Choose File button to select the file to upload and then click Next.
7. Click Next again. On the off-chance your data does not import correctly, this is where you can manually map each of the fields in your file to Salesforce CRM.
8. Keep clicking Next until you reach the end of the mapping process, then click Import Now!
9. Click Finish when done.
10. Click the Contacts tab to check your work. You can see the contacts that have just been imported.