Exporter for Contacts 2 Help

By its very nature, there can be no one-size-fits-all help for the many different use cases. Thus, solution examples for the most common use cases are given here to help you develop your own solution for your export. Based on user feedback, this page will be updated regularly.

How to create an export setup for email marketing

This example shows how to create a setup for a CSV file with five columns (first name, last name, email address, phone number, birthday) and how to give the columns their own title.

Click here for step-by-step instructions

Does version 2 support the export of the creation and modification date of a contact?

Both the previous version and the current version 2 of the app use a dedicated interface from Apple to access contact data. With macOS 10.12, Apple released a new version of this interface in 2016, which unfortunately removed support for the creation and update date of a contact. Version 2 of the app must use this new interface; the previous version was already declared deprecated by Apple with the introduction of the new version and should no longer be used. For technical reasons, it is therefore not possible to offer these fields in version 2.

With "Contact Creation Date Migrator" I offer a free tool (macOS 13+) that determines the creation and modification date of a contact via the legacy interface and adds these values to a contact as regular date fields so that they can be accessed in the Contacts app and also exported by Exporter for Contacts 2.

Download "Contact Creation Date Migrator"

The upgrade from version 1 does not work!

The upgrade requires an iCloud account. Furthermore, both apps must be able to access “iCloud Drive”. So make sure that “iCloud Drive” is enabled in the System Preferences > Apple ID. Also check if access is allowed under “Options” for both apps.

How can I exclude contacts without email addresses from export?

It's simple: Create a Smart Group in Apple Contacts that contains only contacts with the desired criteria. Then drag the members of the Smart Group to the contact list of Exporter for Contacts.

When I open the generated CSV file in Excel, all columns are screwed up!

Of all things, Excel fails to recognize a CSV structure - Apple Numbers is much smarter. The trick in Excel is not to simply open the file, but to import it via the menu command File > Import. Then follow the instructions. Exporter for Contacts also supports the native Excel format. So just use that and you won't have to deal with such problems.

My Excel file has hundreds of columns and is totally cluttered!

This is quite normal if you have many contacts, use many different labels and have set the export of multi-value fields so that they are packed per label in a separate column. Just exclude unimportant fields from the export and let the multi-value fields export in list form. Or create a custom format in the Custom Export Layout Editor.

Can Exporter for Contacts stand-alone vCard files and handle .abbu files?

As of version 2.4, you can drag external vCards into the contacts list of an export setup and convert them. The previously necessary intermediate step of first having to import the vCards into Apple's Contacts app is no longer necessary.

A Contacts Archive (.abbu) is a proprietary format that Apple Contacts can create to backup all your contacts and Contacts accounts. It is not intended and made to be read by third party apps.

To be continued...