Export contacts from iPhone, Outlook and Google

Find out which file you'll get

Take 300 contacts on an iPhone that have to be in Outlook on a work laptop by Monday. The iPhone will export them, and Outlook will import contacts. But the file the iPhone writes is one that Outlook for Windows doesn’t import.

Every address book writes one of two files. The first lists each person’s details line by line, as text. Contacts apps call it a vCard, and its name ends in .vcf. The second is a plain table with one contact per row, called a CSV, and it is what Excel, Google Sheets and Outlook’s import read. So the place your contacts live decides the file, and the file decides the next step.

The page on what a VCF file is shows one opened up. The rest of this page goes source by source, then covers the two things people do with the file: open it as a spreadsheet, or move it to the other side.

Export contacts from an iPhone

The iPhone exports a .vcf. It has no CSV or Excel option, on the phone or on iCloud.com. There are two routes to the file.

Route 1, on the phone itself. This needs iOS 16 or later and no computer.

1. Open Contacts and tap Lists at the top left.
2. Touch and hold the list you want to export. To export a group of your own choosing, tap Add List first and put the people in it.
3. Tap Export. Select the fields to include, then tap Done.
4. Choose where the file goes: Mail, Messages, AirDrop or Save to Files.

You now have one .vcf with everyone on that list. For a single person, open the contact and tap Share Contact.

Route 2, through iCloud.com. Use this when you are at a computer and the contacts are stored in iCloud.

1. On the iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then iCloud, and check that Contacts is on.
2. In a browser, go to icloud.com/contacts and sign in.
3. Open the Select menu and choose Select All Contacts. To pick only some, hold Command on a Mac or Control on Windows and click each one.
4. Click the Actions button and choose Export vCard. The browser downloads one .vcf with every contact you selected.

A Mac gives the same file without a browser: open Contacts, select the people, and choose File > Export > Export vCard. Under Contacts > Settings > vCard, two checkboxes decide whether notes and photos go into it.

The usual mistake is to take Route 2 and assume the file holds everyone. iCloud.com exports only the contacts stored in iCloud. If the iPhone also shows people from a Gmail or Outlook account, they stay with that account. Export them from Google or Outlook, or use Route 1, which exports any list the Contacts app shows.

Export contacts from Outlook

Outlook is the opposite case: it writes a CSV. Which menu holds the export? That depends on which Outlook you have.

New Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web and Outlook.com.

1. Select People in the side panel.
2. On the ribbon, select Export contacts. On the web it sits under Manage contacts.
3. Pick All contacts, or one folder, from the dropdown.
4. Select Export. The .csv is saved to your Downloads folder.

Classic Outlook for Windows.

1. Choose File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export.
2. Choose Export to a file, then Comma Separated Values.
3. Select the Contacts folder under your account.
4. Choose Browse, name the file and choose OK.
5. Choose Next, then Finish.

Either way you end up with one CSV. The file from classic Outlook looks odd when you open it, because Outlook writes a column for every field it knows and most of them are empty. Nothing is wrong with it.

Outlook for Mac fits neither list. It has no CSV export, and its legacy version exports only an .olm archive, a file that Outlook for Mac alone reads. If the account is a Microsoft 365, Exchange or Outlook.com account, sign in to Outlook on the web and export the CSV there. The contacts are the same.

Export Google Contacts

Google Contacts is the one source that offers both files.

1. Go to contacts.google.com.
2. Tick the box beside any contact, then choose Selection Actions > All at the top left. Skip this step to export only the ones you tick.
3. At the top right, click More actions, then Export.
4. Choose the format, then click Export.

Which format? Go by where the contacts are headed. Google CSV suits a spreadsheet or a backup. The vCard choice, labelled vCard (for iOS Contacts), suits an iPhone, iCloud or a Mac. For Outlook, export either one and convert it to a CSV with Outlook’s column names, as described below.

Open the exported file in Excel or Google Sheets

You now have a file. If it is a CSV, from Outlook or Google, this step is already done: it opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets as it is.

A .vcf is the harder case. Excel opens it as text and puts each line of the file in a row of its own, so one person fills ten rows. The usual mistake is to start tidying those rows by hand. To get one row per contact, run the file through the VCF to CSV converter instead:

1. Drop the .vcf on the page, or several files at once.
2. Pick a column set. Excel / Google Sheets gives plain names: Full Name, Company, Job Title, Email, Mobile and so on.
3. Check the preview. It shows the first 10 contacts, and Show all lists the rest, with a count of contacts and columns under the table.
4. Download the CSV and open it.

The converter reads vCard 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0, including the labeled fields that iCloud and Google write. The CSV is UTF-8 with a byte-order mark, so Excel shows accents and names in other scripts correctly when you double-click the file. All of it runs in your browser. The file is not uploaded, and there is no account.

Move contacts between iPhone and Outlook

Go back to the 300 contacts on the iPhone. Outlook for Windows imports a CSV and the iPhone imports a .vcf, so the file has to change format once on the way. The converter does that in both directions.

Direction 1, from iPhone to Outlook. Export the .vcf, open it in the converter and pick the Outlook column set. It writes the header names Outlook’s own export uses: First Name, E-mail Address, Business Phone, Mobile Phone. Then import the CSV:

• New Outlook: People, then Import contacts on the ribbon (under Manage contacts on the web). Select Browse, choose the file and select Import.
• Classic Outlook: File > Open & Export > Import/Export > Import from another program or file > Comma Separated Values. Browse to the file, choose what happens to duplicates, select the Contacts folder and choose Finish.

Classic Outlook allows duplicates unless you change that option. If some of these people are already in Outlook, pick “Do not import duplicate items”.

Direction 2, from Outlook to iPhone. Export the CSV, switch the converter to CSV to VCF and drop the file in. It matches Outlook’s columns to contact fields by their header names and downloads one .vcf with everyone in it. On icloud.com/contacts, select the Add button and choose Import vCard. Or email the file to yourself and tap the attachment on the iPhone.

One case needs no file at all. If you only want to see Outlook contacts on the phone, add the Outlook account on the iPhone and turn on Contacts for it. The contacts appear in the Contacts app and stay with the account.

Fix an export that looks wrong

• Accents show as “é” in Excel. The CSV was opened as the old Windows character set. Download it from the converter with the byte-order mark left on, or open it in Excel through Data > From Text/CSV as UTF-8.
• Outlook shows one contact from a .vcf that holds hundreds. Outlook’s window shows only the first contact of a vCard. Convert the file to CSV and import that.
• Photos are gone. A CSV holds text only, and the converter skips the photos inside a .vcf.
• Outlook in another language rejects the columns. Outlook expects the CSV headers in its own language. Map the columns by hand in the import, or rename the headers.