Mike ([info]yincrash) wrote,
2008-10-26 23:50:00
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How to export your T-Mobile Contacts to Google Contacts

UPDATE (8/1/2009) : It appears that T-Mobile released a contacts sync app! http://apps.t-mobile.com/ I haven't tried it, but it probably nicely solves the problem that this post solved a year ago.

UPDATE (6/25/2009) : Changed instructions and code to a bookmarklet! Much easier and doesn't require firefox! keywords: T-Mobile, google, mytouch 3g, g1, android, contacts, export, import, phone, address book

UPDATE (3/30/2009) : T-Mobile has made a couple of changes which caused this script to break. As of today, I updated the script on this page to work properly. Please let me know if it breaks again. I don't think they are purposely breaking, they just implement new things in the javascript w/o telling me.


So, last week, I received my new T-Mobile G1 (previously known as the HTC Dream) which runs on the new fangled Google Android mobile platform. FANCY.

I'm really enjoying playing with it. I'm currently working on making stuff for it.

However, there is one thing I needed sooner rather than later. All my contacts from my old phone.
T-Mobile has a fancy service that syncs all your phone contacts to a T-Mobile server. It lets you manage your contacts on their website, and I imagine one of the original intentions as well was to make switching to a new phone easier. However, the T-Mobile G1 currently has no such feature to sync with your T-Mobile address book. I imagine this is mainly because it syncs with your Google Contacts (yeah, that you use in your gmail and maybe gtalk, but very few other places). This is fine and nice and dandy except I still want all my old phone numbers.

I'm hoping that eventually T-Mobile will release an App that can do the syncing in a clean and proper faction, but until then, I found a javascript hack that someone put together to export the address book from the T-Mobile website address book page. He created it to help a friend who bought an iPhone bring her old address book to her new friend. However, while what he did fairly clear to a web developer, it's not easy to implement for everyone.

So, I tried to make a webpage to do the work for you. Basically, I wanted to rip the data out of the webpage from another webpage. This used to be possible. However, now it isn't. Browsers have implemented permissions to prevent this sort of thing when the pages are from two different domains because it can be used to steal passwords or other sensitive data. Maybe it's still possible to create a web based tool by making the tool's server as a proxy or something, but that means placing a lot more trust in the web tool to not record or divulge your password and such. Also, it would require more work. I got what I needed to get.

At the very least, I changed his code to export to Google's CSV contact format. Just using what his code created did not play that well with Google Contacts. It jammed almost everything into the "Notes" section. I also wrapped the output in a <textarea> tag to make it much easier to copy and paste.

How to export your T-Mobile Contacts to Google Contacts
What You Need: 
  • A webbrowser (this method was tested with firefox and google chrome, but it should work with all major browsers)
  • T-Mobile Contacts
Caveats:
This only exports the following fields,
  • Name
  • Home Mobile Phone
  • Home Phone 
  • Home Email
  • Work Mobile Phone
  • Work Phone
If you need more than these fields, you need to edit the code. You can try asking me for more fields mappings.
What to Do:
  1. Browse http://my.t-mobile.com/ to get to the Contacts page. As of this writing, the page title says T-Mobile MobileLife(SM). You should be able to see all your contacts and do stuff to them.
  2. Add a bookmark to your browser, the name/title can be anything, like "Export Contacts from T-mobile". Copy the following code and paste it in to the URL field
  3. Save the bookmark.
  4. While viewing the T-Mobile Contacts page, click on the bookmark.
  5. A text box should appear. Some browsers say the page is still loading, but really it is not. The text box contains all of the exported data. Select All of this text (Control+A) then copy it to a text file and name it "contacts.csv" or something like that. 
  6. Go to GMail.
  7. Go to Contacts
  8. Select All your contacts and export them. You want to back up your contacts, so you have a clean copy. Importing contacts in Google can result in duplicates. It does have some duplicate checking, but I'm not sure how good it is.
  9. Import your "contacts.csv" file that you created.
  10. Make crazy phone calls from your new phone.


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Anonymous

December 27 2008, 21:03:35 UTC 3 years ago

Not working?

Hey there . . . thanks for this. I'm THIS close, but alas, it's not working. I get "ReferenceError: TMO is not defined" when I try to run the script. Perhaps something has changed . . . ?

[info]yincrash

January 5 2009, 12:49:00 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Not working?

the TMO object is still there for me. can you tell me how you got to the contact page to make sure it's the same page I'm looking at?

Anonymous

3 years ago

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Anonymous

3 years ago

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Anonymous

March 30 2009, 19:19:13 UTC 3 years ago

mine isn't putting the numbers in the list. there is a problem with L_footer_pane

[info]yincrash

March 30 2009, 19:36:22 UTC 3 years ago

yeah. i forgot to update the code when i got home that day. i will do it tonight!

Deleted comment

[info]yincrash

3 years ago

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Anonymous

May 11 2009, 22:19:26 UTC 3 years ago

worked perfect. Thanks so much!

Anonymous

May 30 2009, 17:37:00 UTC 2 years ago

getting TMO not defined even with the updated code. Any suggestions?

Anonymous

June 16 2009, 18:26:10 UTC 2 years ago

Mike4King

worked awesome for me. thank you so much!!!

Anonymous

June 18 2009, 09:17:49 UTC 2 years ago

help :/

I'm getting

>>> var data = ["Name,Section 1 - Description,Section ...r\n') + ''; $('L_footer_pane').update(dataHolder);


help?

Anonymous

June 18 2009, 09:19:29 UTC 2 years ago

Re: help :/

oh oops. Closed out the console and whaddya know. My contacts!
thx :)

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Anonymous

June 23 2009, 14:59:22 UTC 2 years ago

Thanks

Without this I'd return the phone. TMo should buy this from you!

Anonymous

July 4 2009, 10:12:29 UTC 2 years ago

extended version

Mike - Thank you so much for this!

I have edited/personalized to include all fields on the T-Mobile contact details page (as of July 4, 2009, USA T-Mobile), with the exception of person title ('civility') and notes ('comment'). I left off title because it is a dropdown and I could only get it to include the item number on the list (e.g., "4" for "Dr") instead of the value itself (e.g., "Dr"). I left the state field dropdown ('persoCounty' and 'proCounty') and country field dropdowns (persoCountry and proCountry) but assume these will have the same issue if a contact has a values there (none of mine do).

Hope this helps someone out....

javascript:var data = ["First Name,Last Name,Section 1 - Description,Mobile Phone,Home Phone,Home Phone 2,Pager,Home Fax,E-mail Address,Personal Web Page,Home Street,Home Street 2,Home Country,Home City,Home State,Home Postal Code,Section 2 - Description,Business Phone 2,Business Phone,E-mail 2 Address,Business Fax,Web Page,Company,Job Title,Business Street,Business Street 2,Business Country,Business City,Business State,Business Postal Code,"];TMO.ABPORTAL.LIBAB.contactManager._datas.each(function(person) {var a = [];a.push(person.firstname);a.push(person.lastname);a.push("Personal");if(person.homeMobile != null) {a.push(person.homeMobile.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homePhone1 != null) {a.push(person.homePhone1.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homePhone2 != null) {a.push(person.homePhone2.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homePager != null) {a.push(person.homePager.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homeFax != null) {a.push(person.homeFax.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homeEmail != null) {a.push(person.homeEmail.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.homeWebSite != null) {a.push(person.homeWebSite.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoStreet1 != null) {a.push(person.persoStreet1.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoStreet2 != null) {a.push(person.persoStreet2.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoCountry != null) {a.push(person.persoCountry.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoCity != null) {a.push(person.persoCity.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoCounty != null) {a.push(person.persoCounty.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.persoZipCode != null) {a.push(person.persoZipCode.value); } else { a.push("") }a.push("Work");if(person.workMobile != null) {a.push(person.workMobile.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.workPhone1 != null) {a.push(person.workPhone1.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.workEmail != null) {a.push(person.workEmail.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.workFax != null) {a.push(person.workFax.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.webSite != null) {a.push(person.webSite.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.company != null) {a.push(person.company.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.jobtitle != null) {a.push(person.jobtitle.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proStreet1 != null) {a.push(person.proStreet1.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proStreet2 != null) {a.push(person.proStreet2.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proCountry != null) {a.push(person.proCountry.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proCity != null) {a.push(person.proCity.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proCounty != null) {a.push(person.proCounty.value); } else { a.push("") }if(person.proZipCode != null) {a.push(person.proZipCode.value); } else { a.push("") }data.push(a.join(","));});var dataHolder = '';document.write(dataHolder);

Anonymous

July 4 2009, 10:14:41 UTC 2 years ago

Re: extended version

PS - Forgot to mention: the headers (field names for CSV) are all based on standard Outlook headers. The idea was to improve automatic mapping to fields when importing to Gmail contacts (which seems to do well with these Outlook standards).....

Anonymous

July 9 2009, 23:51:02 UTC 2 years ago

Easy

Excellent work. Couldn't have asked for more.

Anonymous

July 16 2009, 01:52:07 UTC 2 years ago

brilliant, man. Worked like a charm. Thanks!

Anonymous

July 18 2009, 20:59:37 UTC 2 years ago

Thank You

Worked like a charm.
Thank you sir.
and...
fuck t-mobile for not having an export option.

Anonymous

August 8 2009, 18:04:37 UTC 2 years ago

Thank you!

your script saved me a lot of typing.
Thank you!

Anonymous

October 18 2009, 19:07:05 UTC 2 years ago

saweet

sweet awsome man thanks a ton saved me hours of my life

Anonymous

November 7 2009, 17:14:12 UTC 2 years ago

thanks

exactly what i needed, and i didn't have to code anything myself. woohoo

Anonymous

November 13 2009, 04:26:18 UTC 2 years ago

worked beautifully for me

Just ran this in firefox on my mac, worked beautifully, hats off to you

Anonymous

January 11 2010, 22:42:13 UTC 2 years ago

great script. the tmobile sync app fails for me, but this is brilliant! thanks!

Anonymous

March 15 2010, 08:20:04 UTC 2 years ago

thank you for the guide and script :)

Anonymous

March 22 2010, 02:22:32 UTC 2 years ago

Thanks!

You're awesome, thanks a lot!

Anonymous

April 10 2010, 17:14:39 UTC 2 years ago

please help?

This isn't working for me at all. Is it because I have a sidekick and use the desktop interface address book instead of a contacts page? I've tried in both IE and Firefox. I don't understand what "clicking on the bookmark" means - neither browser lets me do that. I'd love to get my contacts exported. Please help!!

[info]yincrash

April 10 2010, 17:42:44 UTC 2 years ago

Re: please help?

clicking the bookmark just means opening the bookmark. there is no contacts page for you in my.tmobile.com?

[info]yincrash

2 years ago

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Anonymous

August 16 2010, 13:49:28 UTC 1 year ago

Thank You!!!

This script is awesome!!! Just saved me hours of work to import my contacts to a jail broken iPhone!!

Anonymous

August 28 2010, 21:01:59 UTC 1 year ago

fantastic

Thank you for posting this!! I just got the mytouch slide (talk about a pedophelic name for a phone) and cannot get contact sync to work with tmob. WTF why would you release a phone that won't even work with your internal contacts system? Isn't that the point of mobile backup - so you can bring your contacts to a new phone?? Then not give any option for export?

It's sheer lunacy. But luckily you came to the rescue. Thanks!

Anonymous

September 22 2010, 22:44:11 UTC 1 year ago

thank you

this worked great!!!...thanks!!!!...been trying to recover contacts for days

Anonymous

September 27 2010, 14:51:39 UTC 1 year ago

Thanks a lot

Thank You so much, this helped me to copy all my contacts without have to manually enter into the details into my new iphone-4.

Anonymous

November 18 2010, 22:52:41 UTC 1 year ago

Groups?

Is there any way to export them with the groups that they are assigned to? The more detailed code available here seems to push "Work" onto all of the contacts. Thanks in advance! :)

Anonymous

January 18 2011, 02:57:53 UTC 1 year ago

Amazing

Thank you Yincrash.

Being on my final days with T-Mo, I needed to sync all of my contacts with my Google account. This wasn't possible until I found this website. You. Are. Awesome.

Anonymous

February 23 2011, 15:07:03 UTC 1 year ago

Thanks a bunch.

I've been meaning to organize my contacts for a while now. This made life soo much easier. Thank you soo much.
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