Purpose: Creates a Gmail filter to exclude (whitelist) contacts from a Google contacts CSV file

Author: Matthew Renze

Usage: python.exe CreateFilter.py input-file

• input-file - the Google Contacts CSV file to filter

Example: python.exe CreateFilter.py C:\Contacts.csv

Instructions:

1. Go to https://www.google.com/contacts
2. Select the contact to be included in the filter
3. In the "More" dropdown list, select "Export"
4. Select the Outlook CSV format (NOT Google CSV format)
5. Click Export
6. Run the script on the CSV file (as described above)
7. Copy the output to your clipboard
8. Go to https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#settings/filters
9. Create a new filter
10. Paste the filter string into the "Doesn't have" field
11. Finish creating the filter

Now the selected email addresses will be excluded from the filter

Notes:

• Works only with Outlook CSV format export from Google Contacts. Unfortunately, the Google CSV format files had a weird encoding and couldn't be read as CSV
• Google imposes a maximum size limit to the filter strings, so if you have too many contacts, this won't work. Try deselecting contacts until it does.