The Ultimate Guide to export LinkedIn Contacts Like a Pro

Introduction

As a LinkedIn user, you’ve likely spent countless hours building your professional network, connecting with colleagues, industry peers, and potential clients. But have you ever considered the untapped potential when you export LinkedIn contacts from your Linkedin account? The idea of having all your connections’ information neatly organized can be appealing, and for good reason. I recently decided to export my LinkedIn network. While the process comes with its own set of limitations and challenges, there are still compelling reasons why you should give it a try.

The Power of Your LinkedIn Connections

Other social media sites focus on viral content and trending topics, whilst LinkedIn’s real strength comes from the quality of its users. As a professional networking platform, the platform attracts a unique crowd of industry leaders, decision-makers, and influential executives. One of the most impressive things about LinkedIn is how deeply connected its users are. According to digital marketing expert Jeff Bullas, On average, a LinkedIn user has around 930 connections. This is a lot more than the average number of friends on other social media sites.

This level of connectivity creates a rich network of professional relationships, offering great opportunities for networking, collaboration and business growth. LinkedIn’s user base is a who’s who of the business world. You’l find plenty of executives, thought leaders, and key decision-makers across different industries. This collection of influential professionals makes LinkedIn great for growing your network, finding leads, and building your brand authority. The connections you make on the platform can lead to real-life opportunities, job offers, partnerships, valuable introductions and potential customers. By improving your LinkedIn profile and engaging with connections, you can access valuable knowledge and resources to boost your career or business.

However, to really make the most of your network, it’s important to think beyond just the platform itself. Exporting your LinkedIn connections helps you strengthen your network through personalized outreach, targeted marketing campaigns and integration with your business tools. In the following sections, we’ll walk through the process of exporting your LinkedIn contacts and talk about strategies for getting the most value out of your professional network.

Tip: Accidentally deleted a contact? Don’t worry! Check out our guide on how to recover lost contacts to quickly restore any missing connections.

What’s Included in Your Exported LinkedIn Contacts

Before diving in let’s take a quick look at what information is actually included in the exported list of connections. When you request an export of your connections, LinkedIn provides a CSV (comma-separated values) file containing the following data points for each contact:

First Name

Last Name

Email Address (if available)

Company

Position

Connection Date

As you can see from the screenshot above, the exported file provides a basic overview of your connections’ professional information. Next lets be upfront about the restrictions and challenges when Exporting Linkedin Contacts that you may encounter along the way.

Restrictions and Challenges When you Export LinkedIn Contacts

Only First Degree connections are exported

LinkedIn only allows you to export your first-degree connections. 2nd and 3rd-degree connections, as well as followers, cannot be included in the export.

Email Address Availability

The exported file will only include email addresses for connections who have chosen to make their email address visible to their connections. In my test export only a small fraction of the total connections included an email address. Many users choose to keep their email addresses private.

Within your downloaded CSV Linkedin adds this message regarding email addresses:

When exporting your connection data, you may notice that some of the email addresses are missing. You will only see email addresses for connections who have allowed their connections to see or download their email address using this setting https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/privacy/email. You can learn more here https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/261

Limited contact information in the export

Only includes basic details like name, company, position, and the date you connected in the exported file. As mentioned on rare occasions you may get an email address, but other valuable contact details like phone numbers or mailing addresses are not included.

Daily Export Limits

LinkedIn imposes a limit on the number of connections you can export per day. The exact limit is not specified, but it is believed to be around 1,000 connections per day.

File Format and Language Limitations

The exported file will be in CSV format. However, CSV and vCard formats don’t support all characters, so languages with extended character sets (such as Chinese, Japanese, or Hebrew) aren’t supported.

Usage and privacy restrictions

LinkedIn has strict usage and privacy restrictions when it comes to utilizing exported contact data. Their rules say you can only use exported contacts for approved reasons, like keeping in touch or updating your records. You can’t use them for spam, unauthorized marketing, or making lead lists. Breaking these rules can get your account suspended or closed. It’s important to use the data responsibly to respect your network and follow LinkedIn’s policies, no matter what your marketing plans are.

Potential Empty File Issue

Some users have reported receiving an empty file when attempting to export their network, particularly those with a large number of connections (e.g., over 4,000). While there are some workarounds suggested, such as using a specific URL (http://www.linkedin.com/connectionsnojs), these methods may not work for everyone.

Reasons to Export Your LinkedIn Contacts

Despite the limitations the process can still offer significant benefits for managing and using your professional network effectively.

Streamlining contact management

When you export Linkedin contacts you can consolidate your professional network into a single, centralized database. By merging your connections with contacts from other sources, such as email or phone contacts, you can create a comprehensive address book. This makes it easier to manage and maintain your relationships across various platforms.

Integration with CRM’s and other productivity tools

Exporting your LinkedIn contacts in a portable format like CSV allows you to import them into various productivity and communication tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, email campaigns software, or project management software. This can help you streamline your workflow, automate certain tasks, and ensure your contact information is consistent across different platforms.

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Personalized outreach

While the exported data doesn’t include email addresses for cold emails, once in a spreadsheet format you can apply search filters to segment and filter your contact data based on specific criteria, such as industry, location, or job title. This can help you craft more targeted and personalized outreach messages when reaching out to your connections for professional opportunities, collaborations, or prospecting.

Backup and safekeeping

While your contacts are generally secure in your LinkedIn account, exporting your valuable connections allows you to create a local backup of your network. As well as peace of mind this ensures you have a copy of your contacts’ information in case of unexpected issues with your account or the platform itself.

Enhancing data analysis and insights

Exporting your Linkedin connections provides you with a structured dataset that you can analyze to gain valuable insights. By using spreadsheet functions or importing the data into visualization tools, you can identify patterns, trends, and opportunities that may not be apparent from Linkedin’s search results alone, such as the most common industries or job roles among your connections.

Improved search functionality

While LinkedIn’s built-in search feature is powerful, exporting your contacts allows you to create custom search results tailored to your specific needs. By having your network’s information in a spreadsheet, you can perform advanced searches and filters that may not be possible within LinkedIn’s interface, helping you find the right connections for specific opportunities or projects more efficiently.

Enhanced lead generation

Exporting your LinkedIn contacts can significantly boost your lead generation efforts. By having your professional network’s information readily available, you can create targeted lead generation campaigns, identify potential clients more effectively, and streamline your outreach process.

Offline access and portability

Exporting your LinkedIn contacts gives you direct access your network’s information even when you’re offline or unable to access the platform. This can be particularly useful when traveling or working in areas with limited internet connectivity. Additionally, having an exported file makes it easier to transfer your contacts to a new device or share them with team members when needed.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Export LinkedIn Contacts

1) Navigate to your LinkedIn homepage and Click on the ‘Me’ icon at the top of the page. Select ‘Settings & Privacy’ from the dropdown menu

2) Access the ‘Data Privacy’ section and under the ‘How LinkedIn uses your data’ section click on ‘Get a copy of your Data’.

3) The ‘Export your data’ dialog box opens. Under the ‘Want something in particular? section you’l find advanced options. Select the data files you’re most interested in’.

Check the box next to ‘Connections’ and click ‘Request archive’.

4) You will now see the ‘Request Pending’ message. It took 12 minutes for my download to be ready.

5) You will be notified by email when the download is ready. Click the download link in the email which will take you to the ‘Export data’ page. You can then hit the ‘Download archive’ button to download a zip file your contacts.

6) Extract the contents of the archive using a compression tool like WinRAR, 7-Zip or Unarchiver

7) Open the ‘Connections.csv’ file using a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

Preparing Your Exported LinkedIn CSV File for Import

Before you can import your exported contacts into iCloud, Gmail, or any other platform, you’ll need to make a small adjustment to the CSV file. LinkedIn includes a few lines of informational notes at the beginning of the exported file, which interfere with the import process.

1) Open the exported “Connections.csv” file in a spreadsheet application like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.

2) Locate the “notes” section at the top of the file, which contains information about missing email addresses and LinkedIn’s privacy settings and a blank row underneath it. This section typically spans the first few rows of the file.

3) Delete the entire “notes” section, including all rows and columns associated with it. Make sure to only delete the informational notes and not the actual header row containing the column names such as “First Name,” “Last Name,” etc.

4) After deleting the Notes section, the very first row of your CSV file should now be the header row with the column names.

5) Save the modified file, ensuring that it remains in the CSV format.

Importing your LinkedIn contacts into Google and Gmail

Follow these simple steps to import contacts from your CSV file into Google Contacts:

1) Open your web browser and go to Google Contacts.

Make sure you are signed in with the Google account where you want to import the contacts.

2) On the left-hand menu, click on “Import.”

If you do not see the menu, click on the three horizontal lines (hamburger icon) in the top-left corner to expand it.

3) Click on the ‘Select file’ button in the pop-up window.

Browse your computer to find and select the cleaned CSV file of your contacts.

4) Once the file is selected, click on ‘Import’ to begin the process.

Google Contacts will automatically start importing the contacts from your CSV file. They will be imported into a label/folder that will be named with the days date.

Review your newly imported contacts to ensure they have been added correctly and that the information is accurate.

Importing your LinkedIn contacts into Icloud

Now that you have exported your LinkedIn connections as a CSV file, you might want to sync them with your Apple devices using iCloud. However, iCloud requires contacts to be in the vCard format (VCF).

To import your LinkedIn contacts into iCloud, you’ll first need to convert the CSV file to the vCard format. This process might seem daunting, but it’s actually quite simple. There are several methods and online tools available to convert your CSV file to vCard format quickly and easily.

For a step-by-step guide on converting your LinkedIn CSV file to vCard format check out our article: CSV to vCard Conversion: A Quick Guide.

Once you have your vCard file, importing the contacts into iCloud is a breeze. Simply log in to your iCloud account, navigate to the Contacts section, and import the vCard file. Your LinkedIn contacts will now be synced across all your Apple devices connected to your iCloud account.

Export LinkedIn Contacts for CRMs and beyond

One of the most effective ways to use your exported LinkedIn data is by importing your contacts into your CRM. This can simplify your outreach efforts, track interactions, and give a more complete view of your professional network.

Most modern CRMs include the ability to import CSV or vCard files as a standard feature, making the process easy. Once your LinkedIn contacts are in your CRM, you can add more information, create targeted lists for outreach, and analyze your network’s potential for business growth.

But the possibilities go beyond your CRM. Having your LinkedIn contacts in CSV or vCard format lets you import them into many other applications, such as:

Email marketing platforms
Contact management apps
Project management software
Data visualization and analysis tools
Applicant tracking systems for recruiters

Conclusion

As you explore the various ways to use your exported LinkedIn contacts, always follow LinkedIn’s terms of service and respect your connections’ privacy. Use the data responsibly and focus on building genuine, mutually beneficial relationships with your network.

By using your exported LinkedIn contacts across multiple platforms, you can find new opportunities for collaboration, business development, and professional growth. Whether you want to find potential partners, recruit top talent, or analyze industry trends, having your LinkedIn network data readily available can offer valuable insights.

With your exported LinkedIn contacts and many integration options available, you’re well-prepared to take your professional networking to the next level and find new opportunities for success.

Export Linkedin Contacts – FAQs

How do I extract email addresses from LinkedIn contacts?

To extract email addresses from your LinkedIn contacts, you’ll need to use external tools since the default export only includes emails for a small percentage of your connections. Email lookup services like RocketReach or Hunter.io can help find email addresses associated with your contacts’ profiles.

How To Export Contacts From LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

To export contacts from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you’ll need to use a third-party tool like Evaboot or Prospeo. These Chrome extensions add an “Export” button to your Sales Navigator lead lists, allowing you to extract your leads’ data, including email addresses and other valuable information, into a CSV file.

Can I export contacts not directly connected to me?

No, LinkedIn only allows you to export your first-degree connections. Second and third-degree connections, as well as followers, cannot be included in the export. To export contacts beyond your direct connections, you would need to use third-party tools or extensions.

How do I export contacts in LinkedIn and import them into my email marketing platform?

To export contacts in LinkedIn, go to your settings, request an archive of your data, and download the connections file. Then, convert the CSV file to a format compatible with your email marketing platform (e.g., vCard) if needed. Finally, import the converted file into your email marketing platform, following the platform’s specific instructions for importing contacts.