Contacts Form straight to Google Contacts

April 26, 2019 12:26 AM

How can I set up a form for people to fill in their contact information and have that go directly to Google Contacts?

I would like to set up an online form where my friends and other folks I know (mainly those I have on social media but have no other details for) can fill in their contact details, and I would like those contacts to go straight to my Google Contacts account.

I can set up a Google Form easily, but then that's an extra step to import it into Google Contacts. There will be duplicates, but at least I can merge duplicates on Google Contacts pretty easily.

Is there an app that does this already? Or some way to hack together a form?

posted by divabat to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

You could do this using Google Apps Script. It requires a bit of programming knowledge (it's Javascript-based).

Create the form. Choose to save your responses into a spreadsheet. Open the spreadsheet and go to Tools > Script Editor. Here's where you'd write a function that would run every time the form is filled out.

Set a trigger by going to Edit > Current Project's Triggers from the script window. Here, you can set up a trigger to run your function every time the form is filled out.

You'd be using the ContactsApp and SpreadsheetApp classes.

This tutorial might be a helpful starting point even though it's not specifically about contacts.
posted by beyond_pink at 6:09 AM on April 26, 2019

Zapier is a web-based app that automates and integrates many functions like this. They have several integrations for Google Contacts. The free version, in my experience, was enough for me to use to automate the transfer of about 150 people filling out email forms straight into Google Sheets.
posted by caveatz at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2019 [2 favorites]

Zapier's free limits are 100 actions per month, resetting on the first of the month. So, if you have between 100 and 200 things to do, you can spread it over two months. If you have more, I think the monthly rate is $20.
posted by soelo at 7:21 AM on April 26, 2019

IFTTT is a free service similar to Zapier, can also work directly with Google Sheets and Contact.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 8:19 AM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I just looked on IFTTT and there seems to be a couple of applets that add contacts to a spreadsheet, but I'm looking for the other direction. Is there a way to see how a applet is made without needing to install it first?
posted by divabat at 4:49 PM on April 26, 2019

You can create an IFTTT applet from scratch to do exactly what you want, if your brain thinks at least a bit like a robot. I just did a "dry run" through the steps, and this should do it:

1) https://ifttt.com/create
2) Click "+This" link and select Google Sheets
3) Select the "new row..." trigger
4) Paste in the URL of your Google Forms spreadsheet
5) Click "+That" link and select Google Contacts
6) Select "New Contact" action
7) Use the "Ingredients" buttons to match up the Contact fields with the right columns in the spreadsheet
8) Click Finish

I haven't tested with my own data, but this should be right up IFTTT's alley.
posted by misterbrandt at 6:47 PM on April 26, 2019 [1 favorite]

I had an issue with an IFTTT recipe that was syncing iOS and Google Contacts. It kept running over and over after I just added one contact in my phone. I could not get it to stop and IFTTT was no help. I also tried to get assistance in the subreddit without success. IFTTT is great when it works, but be prepared to test it extensively and for it to break at the worst possible time. I have other applets that work almost all of the time, so it is worth a try.
posted by soelo at 7:55 AM on April 29, 2019