MailWhen

Documentation

Adding the addresses to Google Contacts

Four steps, on a computer. Google Contacts has no import on a phone, so this is the one part that cannot be done from the Gmail app.

Download the Google CSV

The import

  1. Open contacts.google.com.
  2. Choose Import in the left-hand menu.
  3. Choose Select file, and pick mailwhen-google.csv.
  4. Choose Import.

They arrive under a label called MailWhen, so the whole set can be found together and removed in one action if it turns out not to suit you. Gmail's autocomplete picks them up straight away.

If you read Gmail on an iPhone

One setting decides whether any of this shows up. Tapping a contact file on an iPhone never reaches Gmail — iOS claims that file type for Apple Contacts before any mail app sees it, and files the cards under whichever account is the default. If that is iCloud, the import succeeds, nothing is lost, and Gmail still completes none of the addresses, because Gmail reads Google Contacts and nothing else.

To point the phone at Google instead: in Settings, then Contacts — on recent versions of iOS it sits under Settings → Apps → Contacts — open Default Account and choose your Google account. It has to be listed there already, under Accounts, with Contacts switched on.

With that set, opening mailwhen.vcf on the phone puts all of them into Google Contacts directly, and the four steps above become unnecessary.