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!




















November 25th, 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.
November 25th, 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.
November 28th, 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!
November 28th, 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.
December 10th, 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 : )
December 10th, 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.
December 19th, 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”.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Thank you!
December 25th, 2008 at 10:34 am
You just saved me quite a bit of time and frustration. Thanks!
December 29th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
That did the trick. Thank you! I’m surprised Google hasn’t caught that one.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:53 am
Perfect…its worked very cool.
Thanks a lot
January 2nd, 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.
January 4th, 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.