Email, Messaging, & Video Calls Email 209 209 people found this article helpful How to Export Your Gmail Contacts Export your address book to Outlook CSV, Google CSV, or vCard format by Heinz Tschabitscher Writer A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997. our editorial process Heinz Tschabitscher Updated on September 11, 2020 reviewed by Jon Fisher Lifewire Tech Review Board Member Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek. our review board Article reviewed on Sep 04, 2020 Jon Fisher Email Gmail Yahoo! Mail Tweet Share Email Gmail makes it easy to maintain an address book. Everybody you communicate with is automatically added to your Contacts. Additional people and data can be entered as well. Your address book isn't tied to one Gmail address. You can use it with another Gmail account or a desktop email program such as Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird or Yahoo Mail. To use your address book in other places, export it to CSV or vCard format. Instructions in this article apply to the web version of Gmail and should work in any web browser including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera. Export Your Gmail Contacts To export your full Gmail address book: Open Google Contacts. The easiest way to do that is to visit https://contacts.google.com/ or use the apps menu at the top right of Gmail to choose Contacts. In the left panel, select More to display additional options. Select Export. To export an entire address book, select Contacts. Select the drop-down arrow to choose a Google Contacts group. Choose an export format: The Outlook CSV format exports all data and converts names to the default character encoding. The Google CSV format exports all data and uses Unicode to preserve international characters. Some email programs such as Outlook do not support Unicode.The vCard format is an internet standard that is supported by many email programs and contact managers such as OS X Mail and Contacts. Select Export. Download the file (named Contacts) to your Desktop. You can rename the file anything you want, like gmail-to-outlook.csv (for the Outlook CSV format), gmail.csv (for Google CSV) or contacts.vcf (for the vCard format). Contacts Automatically Added by Gmail Your list and file of contacts may be large because Gmail adds new contact entries to your address book when you reply to an email or forward it to a new address. These new automatic entries are found under Other contacts in Gmail Contacts. To prevent Gmail from adding new addresses to your Contacts automatically: Go to Gmail and select the Settings gear icon in the top right corner of the page. Select See all settings. Go to the General tab. In the Create contacts for auto-complete section, select I'll add contacts myself. Select Save Changes at the bottom of the page.