It has taken a while to work out what to do with Google contacts (which I want to be the central store for my contacts). Having various attempts at sync cause massive duplication (up to 6x in the end) I went back to a known good set from a couple of months ago.
The answer was to create my own CSV file completely in line with Google´s own export/import format. That looks like the following (you can copy and paste special>transpose in Excel):
Name
E-mail
Notes
Section 1 – Description
Section 1 – Email
Section 1 – IM
Section 1 – Phone
Section 1 – Mobile
Section 1 – Pager
Section 1 – Fax
Section 1 – Company
Section 1 – Title
Section 1 – Other
Section 1 – Address
Section 2 – Description
Section 2 – Email
Section 2 – IM
Section 2 – Phone
Section 2 – Mobile
Section 2 – Pager
Section 2 – Fax
Section 2 – Company
Section 2 – Title
Section 2 – Other
Section 2 – Address
Section 3 – Description
Section 3 – Email
Section 3 – IM
Section 3 – Phone
Section 3 – Mobile
Section 3 – Pager
Section 3 – Fax
Section 3 – Company
Section 3 – Title
Section 3 – Other
Section 3 – Address
Then line up your own items with these (or not as the case may be). I still get an error ("The file may have been too big") but the contacts appear to come over OK.
Now to see if GooSync, my current sync saviour will work with these new contacts, and to work out quite how many new ones I have lost from the last few months.