[HOWTO] Import Gmail contacts into eCloud

Recently we had a user ask this question on the forum - How do I import my google contact into the eDrive. So thought it might be helpful to add a simple post on the importing process.

Step 1:
Log in to google contacts with your Gmail credentials. When Google contacts opens up on the Left side of the screen you would see a menu like this . Click the ‘More’ and you will see the ‘Export’ option

Step 2:
Select the vCard( for iOS contacts) option. eDrive works with this option. Export to a file on your desktop /laptop. The extension would be .vcf
Screenshot%20from%202019-03-18%2015-12-36

Step 3:
Login to eDrive as per the url given in the screen shot. Enter you username@e.email and password.
Note: Enter complete useriD@e.email
Screenshot%20from%202019-03-18%2015-13-39

Step 4:
On the top of the screen on eDrive you will see a menu bar like this. Choose the icon for ‘Contacts’
Screenshot%20from%202019-03-18%2015-14-14

Step 5:
On the lower part of the screen to the left you will see the Settings icon. Click on it and the text ‘Import into Contacts’ link appears
Screenshot%20from%202019-03-18%2015-28-57

Step 6:
Clicking on the ‘Import into Contacts’ link will open a window where you can browse and choose where you saved the .vcf file. Import it into the eDrive. You should see a small popup where it will show you the contacts being imported into the eDrive contact list.
You should be able to see the contacts in the eDrive list now.
Step 7:
If as a part of your /e/ ROM setup you have added this same /e/ account then the contacts you have added should show up in your phone after a couple of minutes. Remember this sync will take some time. So wait for it to happen.
You can add and remove contacts from the contacts app on your Phone or from eDrive and they should sync in both places after a short time.

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

4 Likes

I was able to import some of my contacts but others for some reason failed. I tried a second time and ended up with a duplicates. I cannot see how to delete an address book and start over again.

When I add the folder link that shows in the Contacts settings in ecloud.global to my NextCloud app on the desktop, it sees the folder as empty even though the web interface on ecloud.global shows a bunch of contacts.

Any suggestions welcome.

Thanks,

David

Okay. Belay that request. I fooled around with adding new address books and renaming the default address book and somehow a delete option appeared in the “…” menu and I was able to delete. Might be that you can’t delete your one and only address book.

Thanks for listening!

One more addendum, in case anyone else is working on this issue. The web interface available via https://e.email also offers a Contacts tab. It offers the possibility of importing a .vcf file (exported from Gmail) similar to the method available for the Contacts tab at https://eclould.global.

Also available in the https://e.email interface via the Settings :gear: button is an option to pull your email contacts from the https://ecloud.global instance with Remote Synchronization (CardDAV). Paste the link from http://ecloud.global - Contacts/Settings/{AddressBookName}…/CopyLink into the Remote Synchronization (CardDAV) dialogue and your contacts will be synchronized for both applications.

I’m not sure if this is the simplest solution but it seems to work.

Worked for me!
Could eCloud also import contact photos, too? As far as I can see, contact photos are exported into a .vcf file as links to public images on Google Cloud, like this:

PHOTO:https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-dlO3laiJod4/VD0ADBOlBuI/AAAAAAAAAA
A/U5Lvmppq4F4DY7RTLVAJmqIH4_ZuraxUQCOQCEAE/photo.jpg

but not imported anywhere.

Is this solved? Vcf import to edrive doesn't work

I don’t hink so. But haven’t tried for a longer time :frowning:

Has it been solved now @harvey186 @Manoj do you know? If /e/ team gave up, I suggest at least to write something else in step 7 above. This bug is the one thing that frustrated me when I first moved to /e/ over a year ago, therefore I want to point it out. OK or not OK?

Sorry, it’s step 6 that has to be changed. Ok?

Is this the same issue that is being tracked on Gitlab

I got my contacts imported, but is there really no way to get contacts with picture? Sure I don’t have picture at all of contacts so it is still doable manually to add those, but would be nice to have those imported as well.

What I said. Importing pictures would sure be nice, but apparently /e/ developers have their hands full with other priorities.

Hi everyone,

I made a Python script e-vcard-google which allows you to import your contacts while preserving the photos.

For those of you who already migrated the contacts, only vCards with photos can be imported, but merging is a manual process.

2 Likes

I sent a gmail attached with a list of 100 contacts (in .vcf format) to my e.email account. I then opened this email, and downloaded the .vcf attachment to my Nexus 5x efoundation phone. When I went to import the vcf (from within the Contacts app), the file did not show up (even though I could see it with my Files app).
To troubleshoot I exported a test .vcf from my phone to the Downloads folder, and then I was able to re-import it just fine in the Contacts app. I noticed that even though the 100 contacts and the test were both .vcf files, the little icon was different for each. For some reason the phone only recognized the test .vcf as a “true” .vcf.
I then tried opening the 100 contacts vcf straight from the inbox of my email, and it imported just fine.
So, it appears that the email app, when it downloads a .vcf file to the Downloads folder it somehow renders it unreadable for the Contacts app as a “true” .vcf

Out of curiosity, did the .vcf file contain contact images? Were they embedded or just a link? Were they imported? Thanks.

Good question. On my Google phone the contacts have images, but none of the images imported. I believe the images all must be links.

Thanks for the script.
Currently it stops when hitting a contact with a linefeed inside the “FN:” value.

Example VCARD entry causing the issue:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:Bibrich
Deo-Steine und Ohrenkerzen
N:Bibrich;;;;

END:VCARD

The error message is:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “D:\Downloads\e-vcard-gmail.py”, line 29, in
field, value = line.split(’:’, 1)
ValueError: not enough values to unpack (expected 2, got 1)

Of course I can fix my exported contacts.vcf in some text editor, but this might help others to know what happend.

Replace <LF> characters inside fields by something else, for example with “\n”, since the python script to integrate photos cannot handle such situations (2021-05-13).
I used Notepad++ with the following regular expressions for search/replace:

Search for:
[^\r]\n
Replace with:
\\n

Thanks for reporting your issue. I’d like to fix my script and handle such cases. Correct me if I’m wrong…

Your contact is shown on the phone as:

Bibrich
Deo-Steine und Ohrenkerzen

In the file it is written as (I use UTF8 fonts here for \r and \n):

FN:Bibrich␍␊
Deo-Steine und Ohrenkerzen␍␊

Can you confirm there is no spaces at the start of the second line? Something like:

FN:Bibrich␍␊
␠Deo-Steine und Ohrenkerzen␍␊

PS: if you feel like opening an issue on Github, we can continue our discussion there.

yes, I confirm that there are no extra spaces at the start of the second line.