My good friend (and occasional author for The Verge) JR Raphael has a e-newsletter wherein he not too long ago wrote about cleansing up your Google Contacts record by deleting previous and no-longer-wanted entries.

What a good suggestion, I believed. But.

Unfortunately, I’m one thing of a hoarder on the subject of contacts. After years as a tech journalist, I’ve who-knows-how-many enterprise contact listings, a lot of that are fully old-fashioned. But though it’s doubtless that loads of these folks have moved to totally different firms and totally different e-mail addresses, I really feel I ought to preserve the entries — what if I come throughout them in some unspecified time in the future and need to test the place I knew them from? Or what in the event that they nonetheless work there although it’s been a number of years and I need to say hello?

There is another excuse that I’m reluctant to delete sure contacts — an unlucky one. As the years go by, my contact record has begun to incorporate buddies and family members who’re now not with us — and I discover that I’m loath to take away these names from my record. It’s not logical, or cheap, however to me it seems like a type of rejection. In 2015, in an article titled “My Digital Cemetery,” New York Times author Rob Walker expressed it this manner: “The convenient-by-design act of deleting the name of a dead friend with a simple tap or click can feel like overtly participating in removing that person from the world.”

The results of all this can be a Google contacts record that has a number of hundred names in it, a lot of which belong to folks I haven’t contacted in a very long time, or whose entries I merely don’t need to delete. What to do?

I’ve discovered a few methods to carry some order to Google Contacts with out completely shedding the names, numbers, and different info from folks. Here they’re:

Hide your extra contacts

Google has a bizarre method of getting names off your most important contact record: you “hide” them. I put “hide” in quotes as a result of what you’re primarily doing is transferring that entry out of your most important contacts record to an “Other contacts” record.

“Other contacts” comprises entries from all the assorted folks to whom you’ve despatched emails or from whom you’ve acquired them. For that purpose, it may be a big record — however because it isn’t normally in view, if you happen to transfer your older contacts there, they received’t litter up your most important contacts record.

You can discover your “Other contacts” on the desktop version of Google Contacts on the backside of the left-hand record of labels. (On the cell model of Contacts, you possibly can’t see your “Other contacts” record, however if you happen to seek for a selected contact who’s in that record, they may come up in that search.)

Here’s how one can transfer a number of contacts to the “Other contacts” record utilizing the Google Contacts internet app:

Hide a single contact

• Cursor over the contact itemizing in order that it’s highlighted, then click on on the three dots to the best of the entry.
• Select “Hide from contacts.”

Hide a number of contacts

• Click the icon for every contact you need to disguise; the icon will flip right into a checkbox.
• When you’ve chosen all of the contacts you need to disguise, click on on the three dots on the prime of the web page.
• Click on “Hide from contacts.”

Incidentally, in case your “Other contacts” record is in itself too unwieldy, you possibly can cease Gmail from including names to it each time you ship or obtain an e-mail.

• Go to “Settings” > “See all settings.”
• In the “General” tab, scroll right down to “Create contacts for auto-complete:” and test “I’ll add contacts myself.”

Export and delete your extra contacts

If you need to actually clear up your contacts record, however don’t need to lose the data for these contacts, you possibly can export them right into a separate CSV or vCard file. Once they’re safely saved, you possibly can delete them out of your Google contacts record.

If you’re like me, you most likely have extra extra contacts than you need to cope with in a single sitting. So right here’s the best way I discovered to deal with it. (Again, that is utilizing the online interface for Google Contacts).

• In the left-hand column, scroll right down to and click on on “Create label.” Choose an appropriate title (I named mine “Bye bye”).

• Spend as a lot time as you want going via your contacts record. Add that label to any entry that you just need to transfer out of the record. The quickest method is to test off any entries you need to label, click on on the label image above, choose the label you created for this goal from the pop-up, after which click on on “Apply.”

• When you’re able to export every part you’ve put beneath that label, click on on the label on the left facet of the app.
• Scroll down the identical left-hand column and click on on “Export.”

• The label that you just selected ought to be on the prime of the pop-up window. If it isn’t, you possibly can click on on the small arrow to the best of the label and choose the right one.
• You can export your contacts as CSV recordsdata formatted for both Google or Microsoft Outlook, or as iCards (in case you are importing to iOS).
• Once you’ve obtained CSV or iCards recordsdata, import them right into a spreadsheet or different app the place you possibly can have entry to them if you’ll want to. For instance, I imported mine right into a Google Sheets file.
• Once you’re pleased together with your export, return to Google Contacts and click on on the label you created in your exports.
• Click on the delete button.

• You have a option to delete simply the label (wherein case, all these entries will nonetheless be there) or delete each the label and all entries which have the label. Select the latter.

Now you will have cleaned up (a minimum of considerably) your contacts record — and all of the contacts that you just nonetheless wished to carry onto are protected and safe in one other file the place you could find them if you happen to ever want them.