Contacts delegation allows users to delegate full access to the contacts in their “My Contacts” group without granting access to their mail or anything else in their accounts. This is a common delegation practice between some executive users and their assistants and may be used in any situation where a user wishes to share all of his or her contacts with another user.

Note: Accounts accessed via a mobile device will not have this feature enabled. Contacts delegation is available in the desktop web user interface only.

Contacts delegation uses a familiar Apps sharing interface. You may delegate your contacts only to other users within your domain. Like mail delegation, you may delegate your contacts to no more than 25 other users at the same time.

Delegation allows the sharing of the entire “My Contacts” list only. You cannot delegate a subset of your “My Contacts” or delegate contacts not in your “My Contacts.” Delegates won't see delegator contacts show up in their autocomplete results or Contact Manager search results. This is expected behavior.

To delegate your contacts:

  • Go to Google Contacts.
  • Click the More pulldown menu immediately above your contacts list and select Manage Delegation Settings.
  • In the Add people text box, enter the email addresses of the users you wish to share your contacts.
  • Click Share & save to finish granting the specified users access to your contacts.

To work with contacts delegated to you:

  • Go to Google Contacts.
  • In the left navigation, click the Delegated Contacts group.
  • Under Delegated Contacts, view the names of users who have delegated their contacts to you. Click on the user’s name to enter their My Contacts group with full edit access