Sync Yahoo and Gmail Contacts with Leopard's AddressBook

Both Yahoo and Google provide a method for importing and exporting email addresses to and from OS X AddressBook but I wanted an easier way to keep things synchronized. Fortunately, if you are running OS X 10.5 (Leopard), the AddressBook application provides a straight forward way to do so.

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
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Both Yahoo and Google provide a method for importing and exporting email addresses to and from OS X AddressBook but I wanted an easier way to keep things synchronized. Fortunately, if you are running OS X 10.5 (Leopard), the AddressBook application provides a straight forward way to do so.

Google is special

Like most people I use a web based email service like Yahoo! Mail or Gmail. And like most people I have been using one of these services for quite a long time and I have quite a large number of email addresses that I have saved in the contact list of each of those services, especially Gmail.

Setup

Setup

Gmail account info
Setup is quick and easy. Go into the Preferences for AddressBook. On the General tab you will see three check boxes for each of the following services: MobileMe, Exchange, Yahoo and Google. You can select all (or none) of these check boxes to enable syncing with each of those services. Google is my preferred service for email so tha's the service I setup. Once you select the checkbox, AddressBook will prompt you for your Gmail username and password. Enter that information and click OK to complete setup. If you have a large AddressBook it could take a while for the sync to complete.

Finish Up

Remote duplicatesYou may already have some contacts in AddressBook that are also in Yahoo or Google and you may find duplicates in your AddressBook once the sync is complete. These are easy to remove. From the AddressBook menu select Card->Look for duplicates. AddressBook will find and merge duplicates entries into just one entry. Any changes or additions to your AddressBook contacts will update your online Google or Yahoo contacts and vice versa.

Author:Khürt Williams

A human who works in information security and enjoys photography, Formula 1 and craft ale.

9 thoughts on “Sync Yahoo and Gmail Contacts with Leopard's AddressBook”

    1. In OS X 10.5.8 Leopard this option is not there unless you have an iPhone or iPod Touch. In OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard it's there regardless of the situation. I think it will be worth it to spend $29 to get Snow Leopard.
      However, there is a hack that will allow you to enable the feature in 10.5.8. It involves editing a .plist file.

      http://lifehacker.com/393855/enable-google-contac...

    2. In OS X 10.5.8 Leopard this option is not there unless you have an iPhone or iPod Touch. In OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard it's there regardless of the situation. I think it will be worth it to spend $29 to get Snow Leopard.
      However, there is a hack that will allow you to enable the feature in 10.5.8. It involves editing a .plist file.

      http://lifehacker.com/393855/enable-google-contac...

  3. I am running 10.5.8 with Address Book 4.1.2 Does this version allow syncing with Google. The exchange and yahoo options are there, but not Google.

    Thanks,
    Paul

  4. many thanks for your post.

    I am looking to sync Google with - one specific group in my address book- I am not finding a way to do this. any help is much welcome.

    I am running 10.6

    thanks

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