LinkedIn: How to Create a Contacts Export File

By Joel Elad from LinkedIn For Dummies, 2nd Edition

3 of 4 in Series: The Essentials of Building Your LinkedIn Contacts List

As you use LinkedIn and build up your contact network, you might end up with more contacts “on file” in your LinkedIn network than stored away in your e-mail program. However, you may want to use your own e-mail system to communicate with all your LinkedIn first-degree connections instead of relying on LinkedIn’s message system.

Adding these people one by one to your e-mail address book could take a while. Thankfully, LinkedIn has a function to make this easier.

In essence, your list of LinkedIn connections is similar to a list of names in any e-mail program’s address book. And just like you can import contacts from an e-mail program into LinkedIn, you can export your LinkedIn contacts to your e-mail program. Exporting is a simple process that amounts to exporting your LinkedIn connections into a contacts file and then importing the contacts file into your main e-mail program.

You can always pick and choose which contacts to export, and your e-mail program should be able to detect any duplicates.

First, you need to generate your exported file of contacts from LinkedIn. To do so, follow these steps:

On any LinkedIn page, roll your mouse over the Contacts link in the top navigation bar, choose My Connections from the menu that appears, and then scroll to the bottom of the new page.
Click the Export Connections link.

You’ll be taken to the Export LinkedIn Connections page. From the drop-down list provided, pick the e-mail program to which you want to export your contacts. Then enter the security image text into the box provided.
Click the Export button to generate your Contacts file.

The File dialog box appears, asking whether you want to open or save the file. Click Save to save the file to your computer. Give it a custom name, if you like, but remember the filename and location because you need that information when you load this file into your e-mail program.