Working Around Gmail Contact Importing: Oops. An unknown error occured while importing your contacts.

by Riyad Kalla on 21. Nov, 2008 in Technology

If you are like me and trying to get your contacts all organized in Gmail, you may likely be running into the god-forsaken phrase:

Oops. An unknown error occured while importing your contacts.

… over and over again; no matter what you do. I was trying to import some CSVs from Windows Vista Contacts (exported from Windows Mail), I also tried editing them by hand in Open Office to make sure they were compliant; that didn’t work.

I kept trying a myriad of different things but no matter what I did the import kept failing, so I started digging on Google.

I eventually found this Google Groups thread and specifically adamteeterpr’s reply with the workaround that worked like a charm, more specifically, enable the Older version of Gmail:

then do the Contacts > Import wizard flow again; apparently the import that runs with the Older version is actually a different importer (or code path) that runs with the New version.

Hope this tip helps!

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This post was written by:

Riyad Kalla - who has written 2266 posts on The Buzz Media.

Software development, video games, writing, reading and anything shiny. I ultimately just want to provide a resource that helps people and if I can't do that, then at least make them laugh.

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No Responses to “Working Around Gmail Contact Importing: Oops. An unknown error occured while importing your contacts.”

  1. Alex 25. Nov, 2008 at 1:23 pm #

    Sometimes I cant even get into my Gmail with Google Chrome, which doesnt make sense, all it does is load and load the page.

    Reply
  2. Riyad Kalla 25. Nov, 2008 at 1:26 pm #

    Ah! I’ve seen that f-ing bug, but only with Firefox for about 6 months then it disappeared, you mean the one where it shows the loading status bar, it gets to like 98% and just sits there right and never shows you the interface?

    I haven’t seen that on Chrome yet, but I know what you are talking about. I had to go back to the older version of the UI.

    Reply
  3. jim 28. Nov, 2008 at 4:26 pm #

    THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POSTING THIS.

    Seriously, before I saw this I was getting ready top punch kittens.

    Well done!

    Reply
  4. Riyad Kalla 28. Nov, 2008 at 5:07 pm #

    Jim,

    *Really* glad I could help, I spent so frigging long on this problem and the workaround turns out to be such a stupid thing — I knew I had to pass that along so others didn’t go insane too.

    Reply
  5. Billy 10. Dec, 2008 at 6:05 am #

    Thank you! I spent hours getting my contacts perfect for my G1 and then the error occured. You made everything better : )

    Reply
  6. Riyad Kalla 10. Dec, 2008 at 10:52 am #

    Billy,

    I’m glad I could help. Interestingly enough that is *exactly* why I was decking out my Google Contacts as well.

    Reply
  7. Mike Lyne 19. Dec, 2008 at 5:52 am #

    Thanks for the tip, worked perfect first time. Even though I had been able to import the .csv to some accounts one kept bringing up the “unknown error”.

    Reply
  8. Pheo 19. Dec, 2008 at 9:15 am #

    Thank you!

    Reply
  9. Tzvi 25. Dec, 2008 at 10:34 am #

    You just saved me quite a bit of time and frustration. Thanks!

    Reply
  10. Robert M 29. Dec, 2008 at 5:25 pm #

    That did the trick. Thank you! I’m surprised Google hasn’t caught that one.

    Reply
  11. wael 31. Dec, 2008 at 12:53 am #

    Perfect…its worked very cool.

    Thanks a lot

    Reply
  12. Trackspike 02. Jan, 2009 at 7:07 am #

    Thanks so much! Worked perfectly – first time. Makes me wonder about quality control process at Google. I can understand bugs with new functionality but accurately porting old functionality seems like a no-brainer.

    Reply
  13. Riyad Kalla 04. Jan, 2009 at 9:35 am #

    Trackspike,

    I know what you mean… I totally don’t understand why the “New” and “Old” gmail interfaces actually have different code flows through the “Import Contacts” code… that’s just weird.

    Reply
  14. Josh 14. Jan, 2009 at 12:33 pm #

    Oh THANK GOD. You are a wonderful person for figuring this out and sharing with the world. A google search brought me here, and it solved my problem. Thanks!!!!

    Reply
  15. Riyad Kalla 14. Jan, 2009 at 5:34 pm #

    Josh,

    Glad I could help!

    P.S.> U of A alum here too! Still in Tucson.

    Reply
  16. Rob Shore 15. Jan, 2009 at 3:11 pm #

    If you are familiar with the phrase ‘driving me to drink’, I was in the car! That phrase: ‘Oops. An unknown error occured while importing your contacts’ was about to get the best of me…until this post.

    Thanks for taking the time to post!!

    Reply
  17. Justin 04. Feb, 2009 at 9:18 pm #

    You are really a savior.

    I was getting ready to call T-Mobile rep & send a note to Gmail support for F***in up the import process. I was looking for a solution for this very same error for about 5 hours now. All the excitement of the new phone is gone now…..

    Being in IT myself, just cannot figure out how Google could have messed up this bad.. especially for this long… looks like this has been reported for about 6 months now…

    Any way… I am just glad I found this. Thanks for posting this for us.

    Reply
  18. Riyad Kalla 05. Feb, 2009 at 7:24 am #

    Justin, Just glad I could help — when I originally ran across this (Right after getting my G1, much like you), the prospect of fixing up my 600 contacts manually made me want to just go to Outlook and forget about everything…

    I agree though, this is so retarded that it’s busted. I noticed Gmail got another visual overhaul, but importing still doesn’t work — you figure on their end they have a log file filling up with exceptions… you’d think they would notice.

    Reply
  19. JP 05. Feb, 2010 at 8:10 pm #

    THANK YOU!

    Reply

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  1. Chris Hall - 11. Dec, 2008

    Getting errors when trying to upload LinkedIn Contacts to Gmail account. This post cracks the case: http://tinyurl.com/6xdqfj

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