Importing & Exporting Contacts - Google / Microsoft 365

This guide covers the import/export of contacts from both Gmail & Microsoft 365

Exporting Google Contacts:

1. Open Gmail and locate the nine-dotted menu in the top right of the page. Click on this and scroll down to find "Contacts", alternatively, you can visit contacts.google.com:

   

   2. Click into Contacts and you'll be brought to your Google account's contacts page. On this page, you can add, remove, and browse through your Google contacts, as well as exporting them for use outside of Google. To do so, click on the "export" icon near the top right of the contacts list:

   

   Then, you'll be presented with a series of options - choose the options that align with the email platform that you're looking to export to:

   

   The top field will allow you to choose subsets of your contacts to export. You can export by label, or by selecting contacts on the previous screen and choosing "selected contacts". To export all contacts, leave this option as default "Contacts (x)" where X is the number of contacts in your address book.

   The bottom options are dependent on your destination. If your contacts are being exported to another Google account, choose Google CSV; Outlook/Microsoft 365 needs CSV for Outlook Only; and for Apple/Android Mail, use vCard for Android or iOS.

   After selecting your preferred options, click "Export" to download your file.

Exporting Outlook Contacts:

1. Visit https://outlook.office.com/people/ to view your Outlook contacts page, then click the "Manage Contacts" icon on the top ribbon:

2. Click "Export Contacts" and you'll be brought to a menu where you can choose the groups of contacts to export. For all contacts, select the default as "All contacts":

   

   This will create & download a CSV file that contains your contacts - be aware that Outlook only exports its contacts in an "Outlook legible" format, some data may be lost when uploading this file to non-Microsoft email platforms.

Importing Contacts to Google: 

1. First, visit https://contacts.google.com/, then on the left side panel, you should see a section labeled "Fix and manage", with an option labeled "Import" beneath it - if these options are not visible, you should be able to expand them by clicking the hamburger menu in the top left of the page:

2. Click "Import" and a menu will appear in which you can browse to the CSV file containing your contacts. If you haven't selected a specific location, these are likely to be located in your Downloads folder:

   Select the CSV that you'd like to open, then click "Open", then "Import". This will begin to import your contacts - be aware that larger address books can take some time to fully import. After clicking import, we recommend letting your inbox process these new contacts for at least 30 minutes before verifying that the contacts were correctly imported.

Importing Contacts to Outlook:

1. Visit https://outlook.office.com/people/ to view your Outlook contacts page, then click the "Manage Contacts" icon on the top ribbon:

   Then, click "Import contacts" - this will open a new menu where you'll browse for the CSV you generated earlier. If you didn't choose a specific location for the CSV to be saved in, you'll likely find it in your Downloads folder:

   

   After selecting your preferred CSV, you can click "Open", then "Import" -  After clicking import, we recommend letting your inbox process these new contacts for at least 30 minutes before verifying that the contacts were correctly imported.