You have to go to your Backup Assistant (contacts) on the Verizon Wireless page. Then you select all the contacts you want to transfer, or select all. You then click on the wheel picture and choose to export contacts. Save it as an .csv outlook file. Once saved on your computer, go to your gmail account and click on contacts. Then you import that file into your contacts. You may have to merge same contacts together if their name doesn't match completely. This will automatically be updated next time you open your people app on the Eris. I know this sounds confusing, but as soon as I got it figured out, it was amazing to have all my contacts on my gmail. Hopefully this helps you too...