How to get your phone numbers into Google Voice

You must have heard that Google introduced phone calling right from your Gmail. The service is not yet available in all countries but being rolled out fast.

Calling the USA and Canada is free and the rest of the world is cheap. You can buy credits with Google Checkout.

The prices of Google Voice are generally cheaper than the already very cheap rates of Skype.

The only remaining question is how to get all your numbers from your iPhone or OSX Address Book into your Gmail? There are two ways to do that.

First option, you can sync your Address Book through iTunes with your Gmail Contacts. Connect your iPhone and find the Info tab where you can select Sync Address Book Contact and Sync Google Contacts. It's a fast and easy solution, but it has one serious downside. This will download all your Gmail contacts to your Address Book and your iPhone. If you're like me, you must have thousands of Gmail contacts collected over the years. You really don't want to load all that into your iPhone as it will slow your searches down.

Second option, and perhaps a better solution is to load your Address Book contacts into Gmail. To do that you have to open the Address Book application. Select all your contacts and choose the menu File/ Export/ Export vCard. This way you will create a file named vCards that contains all your Address Book contacts including their phone numbers. Now, go to your Gmail. Select Contacts/ Import Contacts in the left sidebar. Import your vCards file. Gmail will merge your contacts if it can and import the rest as new contacts.

Now, you can use Gmail Call by simply typing the name of your contact and Gmail will locate the phone number associated with it. Simple, fast and cheap. Enjoy.

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