How to Export Google Contacts (CSV, vCard, and Which to Pick)

Here is how to export Google Contacts: open contacts.google.com, select what you want, click More actions at the top right, then Export. That part takes thirty seconds. The drop-down next to it is the part worth thinking about.

Google offers three file formats, and they are not three levels of quality. They are three different field vocabularies. Pick the wrong one and the destination gets a file it has to be talked through, column by column, on the other end.

This covers the whole list, a single label, and the Takeout route — then what each format quietly leaves behind. Verified against Google's own Contacts Help pages, August 2026.

What actually moves, and what doesn't#

An export is a snapshot of the contacts your account owns, frozen at the moment you click the button. It is a file, not a sync — nothing you change in Google afterwards reaches it.

Most of a contact record travels well. The gaps are specific, and two catch people out on exactly the day they can least afford it.

• Moves: names, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, organisation and job title, birthday, notes, custom fields.
• Moves in two of the three formats: label membership — which of your labels each contact belongs to.
• Does not move: contact photos. Google writes a reference to the picture rather than the picture itself, so most destinations end up with an empty avatar.
• Does not move by default: Other contacts — addresses Gmail auto-saved when you emailed someone you never added. They sit in a separate view and need their own export.
• Does not move at all on a work or school account: the company Directory. Google states plainly that you cannot select all Directory contacts on a Workspace account.

The three formats are three vocabularies, not three tiers#

This is the choice most guides skip, and it decides whether the other end is a two-minute import or an afternoon of field mapping. Pick by destination, not by which name sounds most official.

The honest case for the lossiest format#

Outlook CSV is the weakest of the three on paper, and it is still the right answer when Outlook is the destination. Outlook's importer recognises the headers without being told, and that saved mapping is worth more than the fields it drops.

The exception is names. Microsoft's import guidance asks for a UTF-8 file, and Google's Outlook CSV converts characters on the way out — which is how Zoë becomes Zo? and a Cyrillic surname becomes a row of question marks. If your list has any non-Latin names, take Google CSV and map the columns by hand instead.

Pre-export checklist#

Five minutes here saves you re-doing the whole thing. Work down the list before you open the export dialog.

1. 1

   Merge duplicates first

   Google Contacts has a Merge & fix view that finds obvious duplicates. Exporting first just moves the mess into a system that will not clean it for you.

2. 2

   Decide your scope before the dialog asks

   The dialog offers Contacts, Starred contacts, Frequently contacted, or any single label. Knowing which you want stops you defaulting to everything.

3. 3

   Check Other contacts separately

   Open the Other contacts view in the left sidebar. If those addresses matter, that is a second export.

4. 4

   Count the list

   Google imports a maximum of 3,000 contacts per file and caps an account at 25,000 total. Over 3,000, split the CSV before the import rather than after it fails.

5. 5

   Confirm the list is yours to take

   On a work account, customer and colleague records are usually company data. Check your contract, or ask, before you download anything.

6. 6

   Write down the date

   Put it in the filename. Six months later, contacts-2026-08-14.vcf tells you something that contacts.vcf does not.

How to export all your Google Contacts#

1. 1

   Open contacts.google.com

   Sign in to the account that owns the contacts. If you run several Google accounts in one browser, check the avatar at the top right first.

2. 2

   Leave everything unselected, or tick what you want

   An empty selection lets you choose a scope in the dialog. Ticking individual cards limits the export to exactly those contacts.

3. 3

   Click More actions, then Export

   More actions sits at the top right of the list, and collapses into a three-dot menu on a narrow window.

4. 4

   Choose the scope in the dialog

   The drop-down offers Contacts, Starred contacts, Frequently contacted, and each of your labels. Selected contacts appears only if you ticked some.

5. 5

   Choose the format

   Google CSV, Outlook CSV, or vCard. Google's help page recommends Google CSV for backups, because it is the one format guaranteed to round-trip into another Google account intact.

6. 6

   Click Export

   The file downloads immediately — contacts.csv or contacts.vcf, straight to Downloads. No email step, no waiting.

7. 7

   Open it once before you trust it

   A CSV should show recognisable headers and one row per contact. A .vcf opens in any text editor and should show a BEGIN:VCARD block per person. If the count looks wrong, it is wrong.

How to export just one contact label#

Click the label in the left sidebar, then use the same More actions and Export path. Because you are already inside the label, the dialog's scope drop-down comes pre-set to it — you only confirm the format.

This is the clean way to hand one list to someone else: a client group, a committee, a set of vendors. It avoids the conversation where you email a colleague your entire personal address book because you exported everything and never checked.

Labels themselves only survive in Google CSV and vCard. Export a label as Outlook CSV and you get the right people with no grouping attached — which for a single-label export is usually fine, because the file is the grouping.

The Google Takeout route, and when it is worth it#

Google Takeout exports contacts too, and delivers them as vCard. It is the right tool for an archive of your whole account and the wrong tool for a same-day move.

The Contacts export is instant and lets you pick a scope. Takeout builds an archive in the background, emails a link, and gives you everything. Google notes that a Takeout archive expires in about seven days and can be downloaded five times before you request a new one. Use it when you want one dated bundle of mail, calendar, contacts and files filed somewhere safe.

What breaks in each format#

Photos are the loss people notice, and no setting fixes it. If the pictures matter, export from a phone's own contacts app — those embed the image bytes rather than pointing at a URL.

Rollback plan#

Exporting is read-only and cannot damage anything. The damage happens in the step after it — a bulk delete, a bad merge, an import that duplicates every record. Google gives you two ways back and they behave differently.

Trash holds deleted contacts for 30 days: open it, select what you lost, click Recover. One caveat straight from Google's documentation — contacts deleted from Other contacts never appear in Trash at all.

Undo changes is the heavier tool. Under Settings, it rewinds your whole contact list to a point in the past 30 days in one move: ten minutes ago, yesterday, last week, or a custom time.

Doing it without downtime#

The usual mistake is treating an address book like a mailbox cutover. It isn't one. Contacts are cheap to duplicate, and nothing breaks if the same person exists in two places for a fortnight. So overlap deliberately: import into the destination while Google still holds the originals, live in the new system for a week, then clean up.

• Import first, delete later — set a reminder rather than deleting the same day.
• Keep the .vcf even if you migrated with a CSV. It is the format most likely to still open in five years.
• Re-export after the tidy-up, so the archived copy reflects the merged list rather than the mess you started with.
• Spot-check ten contacts by hand in the destination — one with an accent in the name, one with three phone numbers, one with a long note. If those survived, the rest almost certainly did.

Where AI Emaily fits in a move like this#

A contacts export is rarely the whole job. People take one because their mail is moving or splitting — a new job, a second business address, a personal account that finally needs separating. The address book is the easy half; running two mailboxes while the move settles is the hard half.

That second half is the job AI Emaily does, and we build AI Emaily, so read this as the interested party talking. It connects Gmail, Outlook and IMAP accounts side by side in one inbox, triages across all of them, and drafts replies from a Personal Context brain and client profiles you set yourself.

What it does not do is manage a contact database. It is a mail client, not a CRM, and it will not import the CSV you just downloaded. Land that file in whichever address book you are moving to; we handle the mail.