How to Export Csv from Contacts (2026 Guide)

Follow these steps to export your Contacts csv as a CSV file. Once exported, you can use any of our converter tools to transform the data for your target system.

Export Steps

Prepare your contacts in a spreadsheet

Open Google Sheets, Excel, or another spreadsheet application and create a new sheet. Set up column headers in the first row. At minimum, include 'First Name' and 'Last Name'. Add additional columns like 'Email', 'Phone', 'Company', 'Job Title', 'Street', 'City', 'State', 'Zip', and 'Country' as needed.

Tip: The converter supports flexible column names through alias detection. For example, 'Given Name' is recognized as 'First Name', and 'E-mail Address' is recognized as 'Email'.

Enter your contact data

Fill in each row with one contact per line. Make sure names are split into separate First Name and Last Name columns rather than combined into a single field. For phone numbers, use a consistent format such as '+1-555-123-4567'. For addresses, split the data across Street, City, State, Zip, and Country columns.

Handle multi-value fields

If a contact has multiple email addresses or phone numbers, you have two options. You can include additional columns like 'Work Email' and 'Personal Email', or you can separate multiple values with semicolons within a single cell. The converter will process whichever format you use.

Tip: For group memberships or categories, separate multiple values with commas or the ' ::: ' separator used by Google Contacts exports.

Check for special characters and encoding

If your contacts include international characters, accented letters, or non-Latin scripts, make sure to save the file with UTF-8 encoding. In Excel, use 'Save As' and select 'CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)'. In Google Sheets, the downloaded CSV is UTF-8 by default.

Warning: Saving a CSV without UTF-8 encoding may corrupt names with accents, umlauts, or characters from non-Latin alphabets like Chinese, Arabic, or Cyrillic.

Export as CSV from your spreadsheet

In Google Sheets, go to File and select 'Download as Comma-separated values (.csv)'. In Excel, go to File, then 'Save As', and choose 'CSV (Comma delimited)' or 'CSV UTF-8' from the file type dropdown. Save the file to a location you can easily find.

Verify the CSV file structure

Open the exported CSV in a text editor to confirm headers appear on the first line and each contact occupies a separate row. Check that commas properly separate the fields and that any fields containing commas (like addresses) are wrapped in double quotes. The file is now ready for conversion.

Required Csv Fields

Field	Type	Description	Example
First Name	Text	Contact first/given name	John
Last Name	Text	Contact last/family name	Doe

Your Contacts export must include these fields for successful conversion.

Next Step Once you have exported your csv, use one of the converter tools below to transform your file.

Frequently Asked Questions

Contacts exports csv as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file, which can be opened in Excel or Google Sheets.

The file is usually downloaded to your browser's default Downloads folder. Check your Downloads folder or look for the download notification.