How to Export Gmail Contacts to Excel or CSV (2026)

Contacts

Gmail Exporter Guide

"Export my Gmail contacts" can mean two different things, and that's where most guides go wrong. Your saved contacts (the address book at contacts.google.com) are usually a small fraction of the people you've genuinely corresponded with. Everyone else — clients, recruiters, vendors, old colleagues — lives only inside your inbox, never formally saved. This guide covers both methods, when to use each, and how to open the result in Excel or Google Sheets.

Method 1: Export saved contacts from Google Contacts

This is the official route for the address book you've built up over time. It's quick, but it only includes contacts that have been explicitly saved — not everyone you've emailed.

1. Open Google Contacts. Go to contacts.google.com and sign in with the account you want to export.
2. Choose what to export. Select individual contacts, a label, or leave everything selected to export all saved contacts.
3. Open the Export panel. Click Export in the left sidebar (or the menu / three-dot button next to your selection).
4. Pick a format:
   • Google CSV — best for re-importing into another Google account.
   • Outlook CSV — column layout that imports cleanly into Microsoft Outlook and opens in Excel.
   • vCard (.vcf) — best for importing into iPhone, macOS Contacts and most phones.
5. Download and open. Click Export. The file downloads to your computer; the CSV options open directly in Excel or Google Sheets.

The catch: Google Contacts only exports people you've saved as contacts. If you've ever wondered why a client you email weekly isn't in the file, it's because they were never added to your address book. For that, you need Method 2.

Method 2: Extract everyone you've actually emailed

Instead of reading your saved address book, this approach reads your conversations and lists every person you've sent to or received from — names and email addresses — deduplicated into one clean spreadsheet. It's the practical way to rebuild a contact list from real activity.

1. Install the extension. Add Gmail Exporter to Chrome (it's free, no sign-up).
2. Open Gmail. Go to the inbox, a label, or run a search to scope exactly the conversations you want to pull contacts from.
3. Narrow with search if needed. For example, from:client.com or after:2025/01/01 to limit the range.
4. Export and de-duplicate. Click Export, choose CSV (or Excel/JSON), and remove duplicate rows so each person appears once.
5. Open the file. Double-click to open in Excel, or in Google Sheets use File → Import.

Because the extension runs inside your browser tab, your emails are read locally and the file is written to your device — they're never uploaded to a third-party server. If you want to focus on just the addresses, see our guide on how to extract email addresses from Gmail.

Names and phone numbers

Email addresses and the display names attached to your conversations are extracted as part of the export. Matching contact names and phone numbers parsed from email signatures is a Pro feature — useful when you're rebuilding a CRM-style list rather than just collecting addresses.

Which method should you use?

In short: use Google Contacts when your address book is already accurate and you just need to move it. Use conversation extraction when the people you care about live in your inbox, not your contacts list — which is the case for most active accounts.

Opening the file in Excel or Google Sheets

Both methods produce a file you can open in a spreadsheet, with one contact per row:

• Excel: double-click the CSV. If accented names look wrong, use Data → From Text/CSV and choose UTF-8 encoding instead of opening directly.
• Google Sheets: open a blank sheet and use File → Import → Upload, then keep the default comma separator.
• Apple Numbers: double-click the CSV; Numbers parses the columns automatically.

Once it's open, you can sort by domain, filter by date, or de-duplicate again if you merged several exports. For a deeper walkthrough of the spreadsheet side, see how to export Gmail emails to CSV.

A note on backups

Exporting contacts is also a smart habit before any account change. If you're switching roles or losing access to a work account, pulling your contacts and conversations now means you keep the relationships even after the inbox is gone — more on that in how to save your Gmail emails before leaving a job.