Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to
import and export from the Contacts app on your Mac.
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Now I often get asked about how to import new contacts or export all of your contacts
from the Contacts app on your Mac. I want to talk about both of them here because it's easier
to demonstrate one if you see how the other works. In fact, I'm going to start with exporting. So
even if what you want to do is import, it's important that you see what I'm doing with
exporting so you can properly import contacts from another source. First let me point out
that if you want to import or export using the standard vCard format then it's really
easy. You can select one contact or many. You go to File, Export, and Export vCard. Or you
can simply drag and drop. Dragging and dropping to the Finder will create a vCard file. VCF. This is
a standard format that will work with other apps, not only on the Mac but on other systems as well.
But if you want to get them out into some sort of readable file, something where you can manipulate
them say in Numbers, then it's a little different. If you go to File, Export your only options are
the vCard format or a special contacts format that you can't really use for much else. Usually you
want to get these into some sort of spreadsheet so you can actually do something with the data.
It looks like it's impossible to do. But there's one trick to it and if you don't already know the
trick you're going to be amazed. I'm going to go and run Numbers. Then I'm going to go and create
a new Numbers spreadsheet. Just like a blank spreadsheet here. So now I've got this blank
spreadsheet. It would be great to be able to get these contacts into this spreadsheet. Here's
how you do it. Select the contacts you want. I'm going to Shift Click to select them all.
Then you simply drag and drop and look at this. They all import into the table that you've dropped
them into. The table even expands its size to accommodate and if you had no table there it would
actually create a table. So just dragging and dropping from the Contacts app into Numbers
works great. Here you can see I've got a Header row that has all of the field names and most
of the data is there. It's not perfect. I've noticed that some data is usually missing. Like,
for instance, there's at least one contact here that has a Twitter account listed and that's not
exported. But for the most part you get phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses,
names, and other bits of information. Even the image is imported into Numbers as a background
for a cell here. So that's it! You can now go and shorten up this table if you need to
or get rid of some columns that you don't necessarily want. You can Save this as a Numbers
spreadsheet or you can export it to a variety of formats like CSV or Excel. It's really that easy.
Now the reason I wanted to show you exporting before importing is that if you want to import
you can go to File, Import and the format that you need is a CSV file. That stands
for comma separated variables. It's a spreadsheet format that you can create in apps like Numbers.
What's that supposed to look like? How do you build a spreadsheet table that will
actually import properly into Contacts? Well, you don't have to wonder about that
because by exporting first I now have a great example of exactly what the table
needs to look like. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to look through
the columns and delete the ones that I really don't care about. So for instance maybe I want
to import a bunch of people's contacts and I don't have work addresses. Just
home addresses for them. So I can select these columns here and delete the selected columns.
I could delete whatever else I find is unnecessary like maybe this image column here as well
since I won't have that data. Now I can clear out the sample data here that I got when exporting.
Now I have a table ready to fill in. So here now I've added some data to it. Let me shorten this
table up now. I've just got two names in here but you could be importing hundreds of names perhaps
from a previous contacts database that you had. Perhaps from something you've gotten from a
company or organization. So it's just a matter of working in the spreadsheet here to make sure the
proper information is in the proper place. Get that all squared away. Then save this file so
you have the original Number's spreadsheet. Then you want to export it. Go to File, Export To, and
CSV, that comma separated variable format I talked about. You shouldn't include the
table names and there's no advanced options to choose. Just select Next and export it as a CSV.
Now the thing about CSV files is they're just text files. So I could Control Click on it. Select Open
With and let's open it in TextEdit to see what we've got. This is all it is. It's basically every
row of the spreadsheet with commas separating each cell in the row. You can actually go and Edit this
text file right here in TextEdit if you wanted to. Now let's bring it in. I'm going to go to File,
Import. Then I'm going to select the CSV file. I'm going to use Open and I get this interesting
little interface here. It's going to show me the field in the Contacts app and then what it finds
in my CSV file. I can compare them back and forth to make sure they are what I want. So here it's
looking at the first row which was all of the headings. So I can see here, for instance, that
the last name goes to my last name column. First name goes to my first name column. I can compare
all the way down the list. Now I don't want to import that first row so I want to select Ignore
First Card. Then I could use this arrow here to go over one and see how the first contact looks. Last
name, first name, phone number, email. That all matches up. I can look at the second one. I can
go through them all if I want. If something is out of place I can simply click Cancel, go back
to my Numbers spreadsheet, adjust it. Export a CSV again and keep doing that until everything
is satisfactory. When I've got everything the way I want I just click Okay here and now you
could see it imports those two contacts and here is each entry so it worked just fine.
Now if your goal is to actually create something you could print out or view as a PDF
then you don't have to use any of that. You don't have to go to Numbers or export them or anything.
Just go to File and then Print. If you don't see too many options here click Show Details.
Then you get all these options. Make sure you select the Style, Lists. Mailing Labels,
or Envelopes of course give you those things. But a List will give you a nice list of things
from your Contacts. You can select exactly what you want. For instance I could have phone number,
email address, not the photo, not the job title and just leave it like that. I could adjust the
Font size. I can change the Orientation and I could Print this out or Save it as a PDF.