How to export your Outlook contacts?

Backing up your Outlook contacts offline

In absence of Outlook contact synchronization with address book server or services, people would think about exporting their contacts entries into vCard files (.vcf files), .csv files, .pst files, or Excel files. If you solely work with Outlook, then it is recommended to export them into .pst files for the best import result in the future. 

However, users most likely export Outlook contacts for use on other application or database import. The .csv method is not a good choice because foreign language characters in contacts will be corrupted after exporting. Thus, the best and the most compatible way to export is using vCard method.

Export Outlook contact to Excel

EVO staff has once again made some useful Outlook add-in after EVO Collaborator for Outlook. It is called Power Toys for Outlook. This collection of add-ins include a nice contact export tool for Outlook 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019. 

Export Outlook contact to Excel

There are 5 ways that PTO exports Outlook contacts:

1. Export contacts as vCards (Outlook VCARD 2.1) – This is as same as Outlook’s Save As except Outlook can only save one vCard per operation. PTO is able to save the whole contact folder at once.

2. Export contacts as vCards (VCARD 3.0) – This is the same as #1 except saving vCards as VCARD 3.0 format.

3. Export contacts into one single vCard (VCARD 3.0) – Since vCard protocol is able to store multiple contacts in one single file, PTO saves the hassle of managing 100s or even 1000s of vCard files.

4. Export contacts as Excel Document – PTO enables you to output all Outlook contacts into an Excel file for better viewing purpose with forking in nearly all commonly used fields in Outlook contact entries.

5. Export contacts into one vCard (for Thunderbird) – In reality, vCard files from Outlook have slight compatibility issues if you were to import them into Thunderbird. PTO does some final touches to perfect exported vCard files so the Thunderbird import would go smoothly as expected.

Here is a general guideline to export your Outlook contacts:

1. Download Power Toys for Outlook from EVO’s Official website.

2. Close Outlook and run setup.exe with administrator’s privilege.

3. Open Outlook and click on Power Toys ribbon at top.

4. Click on Export contacts.

5. Select your Outlook contact folder.

6. Click on 1 of 5 export types.

7. A folder created by date will pop up showing all vCard files accordingly.

As you can see, exporting Outlook contacts becomes as easy as 1-2-3.