How do I export Outlook 2003 distribution lists to Gmail?

Question

I have several distribution lists in Outlook 2003 that I need to move to Gmail. While transferring contacts in the main folder is fairly easy—all one does is export to CSV and import—it's not as easy with the distribution lists.

I can't (don't know how to) copy the contacts from the lists to the main contact folder so they can be "normal", and the "save as" options don't include a CSV. There are several of these to do, containing maybe ~100-200 contacts altogether, so I'd like something that's not very tedious.

Answer 1

Here's what I ended up doing, but ought to be a better way...

Save the list as a text file (open it, File, Save As..., Text File (*.txt)) and convert them to the CSV format Gmail likes with the following Python script:

import sys
import csv

for distlist in sys.argv[1:]:
    with open(distlist) as fin: 
        reader = csv.reader(fin, dialect="excel-tab")
        contacts = list(reader)

    header = ['Name','E-mail Address']

    contacts = contacts[4:] # chop off the list header

    with open(distlist + ".csv", "wb") as fout:
        writer = csv.writer(fout, quoting=csv.QUOTE_ALL)
        writer.writerow(header)
        writer.writerows(contacts)

You need to save each list as a text file, then drag and drop them all onto the script, or call it like distlistfix.py "List 1.txt" ["List 2.txt"...]. It will dump out List 1.txt.csv, List 2.txt.csv, etc.

To keep the groups in Gmail, check the "Add imported contacts into: New group..." and type the group name in when prompted.

Answer 2

Try this.

Add each list to the "To" field of a new email, and expand the list (if it has that expand option, which I'm hoping for).

Then add each one to your main contact list by right-clicking each one and saving as a contact. That might be less tedious than writing them out one by one.