Export contacts to Excel

Always an Excel workbook. Scope it to everything, the current segment, or a custom rule set — and optionally add a second sheet of activity history.

Admin about 6 min to do · 6 steps

Export is admin-only, and for a specific reason: a full contact export is the single most sensitive thing this product can produce. It is a spreadsheet of personal data with no access control at all once it leaves the building.

It is also your safety net. Export before anything structural — deleting an attribute, a large bulk edit, a migration — because it is the only route back from an irreversible change.

Import and Export sit together. Export before anything structural.

Before you start

Admin access.
A decision about where the file will live and who will have it.

Start the export from Contacts

Always an Excel workbook rather than a raw CSV, which means formatting and multiple sheets survive.

Choose the scope

All contacts, the current filtered segment, or a custom rule set built with the same advanced filter builder.

Pick your columns

They come from your schema, so anything you defined as an attribute is available. The export has its own column choice, so a tidy grid does not produce a thin export.

Add the activity history sheet if you need the story

A second sheet with the activity history. Much larger, and the only way to analyse the sequence of what happened rather than the current state.

Export before anything destructive

Deleting an attribute, a large bulk edit, a migration. This is the habit worth building.

Handle the file responsibly

It is personal data. Decide where it will live and delete it when you are done — an export sitting in a downloads folder for two years is a genuine risk.

Check it worked

Open the workbook and check the columns you expected are there and populated. An export missing the one field you needed is worth discovering now rather than after you have deleted the attribute.

Worth knowing

The parts people get wrong

Export is on every plan but admin-only, because of what it produces rather than what it costs.
The activity history sheet is what makes an export useful for auditing rather than just for migration.