How to synchronize address book with Gmail

Would you like to synchronize phone numbers, email addresses and all the other information you have saved in the Gmail address book on your smartphone? I assure you that it is a much simpler and more immediate operation than you imagine. Do you want to know how to do it? I will explain it to you in detail in the following paragraphs.

If you want to know how to synchronize the address book with Gmail, in today’s guide I will show you the solutions that will allow you to do this both on smartphones and tablets, as well as on PC and Mac. In addition, I will explain how to synchronize on some famous software, such as Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. I assure you it’s really child’s play.

The synchronization operation is bidirectional: all the names in the phone or PC address book are saved on Gmail and vice versa, but in some cases it can also be set unidirectionally (only from Gmail to the computer/smartphone or only from the computer/smartphone to Gmail). For more information, read on.

Index

• How to synchronize Gmail address book on smartphones and tablets
  • Android
  • iPhone / iPad
• How to synchronize Gmail address book on PC
  • Contacts (Windows 10 / 8.x)
  • Contacts (macOS)
  • Microsoft Outlook (Windows)
  • Mozilla Thunderbird (Windows / macOS / Linux)
• How to synchronize Gmail address book with Outlook.com

How to synchronize Gmail address book on smartphones and tablets

To know how to synchronize Gmail contacts with all major smartphone and tablet models, all you have to do is follow the instructions you will find in the next chapters.

Android

If you have a smartphone or tablet  Android, you can synchronize your contacts with Gmail simply by activating the appropriate functionality on the settings of your Google account.

Then go to the Android Settings, pressing on the appropriate gear icon on the home screen or in the drawer. At this point, select the Google item from the Users and Accounts menu and select your e-mail address. Then, move the lever relative to the Synchronize Contacts option to ON and you’re done.

If you have not yet added a Gmail address to your device (or if you want to add another by associating it with the one already configured on the device), go to the Settings menu  > Android Users and Accounts, press the Add account button, select the Google item from the screen that opens and fill out the form that is proposed to you.

Want to learn more about how to add a Gmail account to your Android device? You can then consult my guide dedicated to the topic. If you don’t have a Google account yet, you can read my other guide on how to create one instead.

iPhone / iPad

Now let’s move on to the procedure to synchronize the Gmail address book with iPhone or iPad. The first steps you need to accomplish is bring to you in the settings of iOS / iPadOS, pressing on ‘ gear icon on the home screen, and select the Password and Account (on iOS 14 and above must go to Settings> Mail or Settings> Contacts ) from the menu that appears.

In the screen that opens, tap on the Add account item, select the Google item and fill out the form for configuring the account by first typing your Gmail address and then the password needed to access it.

Once you have filled out the form, go ahead, make sure that the Contact synchronization item is set to ON  and save the configuration by pressing the Save button located at the top right.

If you have previously entered the Gmail address on your iPhone / iPad, you can check that synchronization is active by opening the iOS / iPadOS Settings panel and selecting the items Password and account> [your Gmail address] (on iOS 14 and subsequent you have to go to Settings> Mail or Settings> Contacts ). Make sure, therefore, that the Contacts item is set to ON.

Now, to set the Gmail address book as the default iOS address book and automatically sync all your contacts, go back to the Settings> Contacts menu of your iPhone, select the Gmail address from the default Account menu and that’s it.

I want to clarify that the procedure in question does not apply if you want to copy the contacts you already had on the iPhone or iPad on Gmail. If you want to achieve this, you need to export the iPhone contacts to a specific file and then upload them to the Google Contacts web panel: More info here.

How to synchronize Gmail address book on PC

Now let’s see how to synchronize address book with Gmail on PC. Follow the instructions for your favorite email client and/or the operating system installed on your computer, which you will find in the next chapters.

Contacts (Windows 10 / 8.x)

In the most recent versions of Windows ( Windows 10 and Windows 8.x ) there is an application, called  Contacts, which allows you to easily synchronize your computer’s address book with that of many cloud services, including Gmail.

To configure a Gmail account in the Contacts application, open the latter by searching for it in the Start menu (or in the Start Screen ) and press the sull’icona icon located at the top left, to access the application settings panel.

In the section that opens, presses the Add an account button, select  Google from the list of available cloud services and log in with your Gmail account data. Then press the Done button to complete the procedure.

Now make sure that the synchronization is active: to do this, tap on your Gmail address in the settings panel of the Contacts application, press on the wording Options for content synchronization and move the lever next to the wording Contacts to ON.

Now, to add new names to the Gmail address book via the Windows Contacts application, press the + icon and choose Gmail from the Save in drop-down menu. The synchronized contacts will be available in the Windows Mail application but not in “external” clients, such as Microsoft Outlook.

Contacts (macOS)

If you use a Mac, you can synchronize the system address book with Gmail in a very simple way. All you have to do is open  System Preferences (the gear icon located in the Dock bar), select the Internet Account icon from the window that opens and press the Google button.

At this point, press the Open button in Safari, to log in to your Gmail account via the Safari browser. After logging in, make sure there is a checkmark next to the Contacts item (as well as next to Mail, Notes and Calendars if you want to sync these other items with Gmail as well) and that’s it.

To use Gmail as the default service for address book synchronization, open the macOS Contacts application, select the Preferences item from the Contacts menu located in the top menu bar and select Your Gmail account from the Default account drop-down menu. The contacts in the phone book will be accessible in Mail and in all applications that support importing system contacts.

Microsoft Outlook (Windows)

If you use the Microsoft Office package and  Outlook is your default mail client, you can synchronize your address book with Gmail using  GO Contact Sync Mod. It is a small software for Windows, free and open-source, which allows you to keep Gmail and Outlook contacts synchronized in a bidirectional or unidirectional way. It is compatible with all the most recent versions of Office for Windows, starting from 2003. To work it requires the presence of the .Net Framework 4.0  and related updates.

To download GO Contact Sync Mod on your PC, connect to the SourceForge website (where the program is hosted) and click on the green Download button. Then start the .MSI file you just downloaded and click on the Next button. Then put the checkmark next to  I accept the terms in the License Agreement and complete the setup, pressing in sequence on  Next,  Next,  Install,  Yes and  Finish.

Once the installation is complete, start GO Contact Sync Mod, wait for the program to detect the Outlook configuration folders (this should take a few seconds) and type your Gmail address in the E-mail text field. Then click on the Sync button located at the bottom right, log in to your Google account and wait for the synchronization of the address book to be completed.

If you want to have Outlook contacts synchronized with Gmail (and vice versa) automatically, put the checkmark next to  Auto Sync and indicate the time interval for synchronization in the adjacent text field. If, on the other hand, you want to make the synchronization unique (only from Gmail to Outlook or from Outlook to Gmail), check the  Outlook to Google only option or the Google to Outlook only option.

Mozilla Thunderbird (Windows / macOS / Linux)

Even  Mozilla Thunderbird, the popular free email clients available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, allows you to synchronize your contacts with Gmail. To do this, however, you need to use an add-on called gContactSync.

To download gContactSync on your PC, you can proceed from the Mozilla Addons website or from the internal panel for add-ons. In the latter case, click on the ☰ icon and select Add-ons> Add-ons. At this point, select the Extensions tab in the sidebar and use the search engine at the top to type in the term “gcontact sync”.

Once this is done, click on the corresponding search result and press the Add to Thunderbird button. Finally, press the Add and Restart buttons to complete the integration process of the add-on on Thunderbird.

When Thunderbird restarts, through the appropriate screen, choose whether to synchronize the address book with a Gmail account already configured in the program or with a new account, log in to the Gmail account you want to synchronize with the program and choose which address book to synchronize from ‘special drop-down menu.

If you want, you can also choose what type of synchronization to perform (bi-directional, read-only or write-only) using the Select the synchronization direction drop-down menu. Finally, press the End button to complete the procedure.

How to synchronize Gmail address book with Outlook.com

Would you like to export Gmail contacts to Outlook.com? It is not difficult. You can perform different procedures to achieve this, depending on the type of device you have and the operating system running on it.

To find out how, read my guide on how to synchronize Outlook with Gmail, in which you will find explained how to synchronize messages, address book and calendar between the two services.