Addressbook solution?

Warning: this might be a bit messy.

I have just upgraded from KDE SC 4.3.5 to 4.4 on Kubuntu 9.10.
I used to have my addressbook on my GMail IMAP account via dIMAP which worked 
perfectly. I had planned to export my address book before upgrading to have a 
backup but forgot to do so. My contacts are still on the server though.

So after some hassles upgrading from the KDE ppa I wanted to check which 
Kontact items was working and all of them worked fine but KAddressbook.

Tried to see if I could add an IMAP resource but the only available was the 
Kolab resource. I tried to add one and it seemed to work but it didn't show up 
in the resource list. I can see it in the process list:

7271 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/akonadi_kolabproxy_resource --identifier 
akonadi_kolabproxy_resource
 
Then I went on to test the googledata resource and manually added all my 
contacts by clicking on "[Add this contact to the address book]" which seemed 
to work fine but after a while I realized that details like birthday and 
(physical) address went missing after a while. I cannot really figure out when 
and why but it seems that if I edit a contact in Kontact the syncing to GMail 
fails.

I had a look at the cache settings for the address book folder settings but it 
isn't intuitive enough for me. (BTW: what is the difference between an address 
book and an address book folder?).

So what would be the best way for me to proceed? Is there a way I can use my 
contacts on the IMAP folder? Was I just unlucky this first time I tried the 
googledata resource? Should I delete it, delete my GMail contacts and try 
again? Should I manually save the contacts to the HD and create a script to 
parse them and create a proper VCF file?

(you were warned it was a bit messy ;)

-- 
Best Regards / Med venlig hilsen

Thomas Olsen