Inserting multiple values into a text cck field with unlimited checkboxes

I am trying to import an export of my gmail contacts and there is a column called membership groups which breaks down my contacts' groups. The seperator is " ::: " so I use the explode module and use %s:::%s as the value.

What ever I do, I cannot get tamper to import values when there are multiple groups. If there are no groups and only 1 value in the field membership groups, it imports fine.

This patch seems to only work for drupal 7 http://drupal.org/node/992420

Please help!

BTW I have also thrown around the idea here of creating a direct feed to google contacts... http://drupal.org/node/1213446