Exporter for Contacts Support

Exporter for Contacts 1 is now legacy software. If you use macOS 12 Monterey or newer, use Exporter for Contacts 2.

Understanding how Apple Contacts does structure and organize data is the key to work efficiently with Exporter for Contacts. Read this article to get a deeper insight .

Frequently Asked Questions

Exporter for Contacts shows only a warning message and does not "see" any contacts!

Apparently, you accidentally have denied Exporter for Contacts to access your contacts. Click here for instructions to fix this.

Can I use Exporter for Contacts to export my contacts to an Excel file for bulk editing, then import this file again without data loss?

Use Importer for Contacts to import stuff into Apple Contacts. Importer for Contacts was developed to overcome all the limitations of the import function available in Apple Contacts. It can read Excel files, supports custom labels, automatic group assignment, and more.

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 by using the special "Labeled List"/"Unlabeled List" labels.

Can Exporter for Contacts open vCard files and handle .abbu files?

Exporter for Contacts is designed to work directly with Apple Contacts and uses its database through a special interface provided by Apple. This is the best way to ensure data integrity and privacy when handling your contacts. You need to import external vCard files into Apple Contacts first, so that Exporter for Contacts can access these contacts.

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.