Importing and Exporting Contacts
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- Опубліковано 6 січ 2021
- macmost.com/e-2347 Exporting contacts from the Contacts app to a spreadsheet may seem impossible until you learn one simple trick. You can also export a spreadsheet to a CSV format and import contacts into the app.
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Your literally a genius. I got all my Work contacts from a spread sheet imported to numbers and and then to my contacts. Was able to exactly mark the fields that I wanted including department, title , extension etc by first saving a sample contact and exporting it to numbers and saving to CSV file.
You are god sent .. thank you !
Gary this is AWESOME! My contacts are all over the place! I have been putting off cleaning them up because there are so many duplicates and errors. Using Numbers to sort and manipulate is exactly the solution I needed.
Thank you for showing us this!
Wow that is super-useful! Thank you, Gary! You have such a great gift for explaining things simply and clearly.
Thanks again Gary. You never cease to amaze me all that you have in that head of yours. Great share. 👏
Gary, I have always used MS Exel and had no idea how useful Apple Numbers would be for my contacts. By simply selecting all my contacts , dragging and dropping into Apple Numbers, I had no idea how easy it was to organise my contacts from there. And by the way, when I tried this on MS Excel, it completely failed 😂Gary you are the bomb!! Thanks dude, you are awesome!! You really deserve a medal 👍🏻🥇🏆😂
Thank you, Gary, wow that seems so much easier to do. I do print my own mailing labels! A lightbulb moment. 👍🏻
Gary, brilliant! I tried (unsuccessfully) to unravel this several times. - - - This materially increases the value of the Contacts app.
Wow! Great information! I do wish I'd known this back in '08 when I got my first Mac. It would have saved me a lot of effort! Great job!
Thanks for the tip. I managed to merge a selection of contacts into a single Note in the Notes app. By selecting all cells of the auto-created table in Numbers, and dragging the selection onto a Note, a table containing all of the data was auto-created at the insertion point. Magic!
This saved me a lot of time😀
AMAZING! Why isn't this information everywhere. I've been going around in circles. Thank you SO much!
Gary you are a rock star! You just saved me so much time. I have never used Numbers b/c no ONE uses Numbers.
Why not export this same format in a csv. The contacts app on the mac is the absolute worst!
wow, I was looking for this workflow so many times .... never saw a solution how to do it. Thanks Gary!
Gary- you're the best. I was Patreon for a few years, then stopped only because you were discussing new and I still had old. Currently we are warned of 'something big going to happen' so I went to your old videos to make sure I save my bookmarks and contacts correctly before 'it' happens. See you on the other side .. . mn
Gary, as always, you always seem to provide that little thing I haven't figured out yet - nicely done! A suggestion for a future video could be on how the Contacts app works overall. I use mine with iCloud and generally successfully, but I have no end of duplicates or contacts on my desktop not in the cloud, etc. I suspect many would enjoy it. Keep up the excellent work!
Me too it drives me bonkers because I thought my contacts sync across all devices as this is how I set it up but they don’t 😡
thanks for the sharing, such a great video, direct to the point and helped me a lot ! Big thanks once again !
After all these years I have got our Christmas card labels printed out! Thank you so much, Gary.
Thank you so much for this wonderful tutorial! ✨
I wished I’d have known this when I was writing my Christmas cards. I’ve copied a link to this video in a reminder for this years cards. Thanks.
Me too, Jed! 😃
Thanks Gary, your videos are very helpful 👍🏼
Wow; you just saved me a ton of time. Thank you for the educational video!
Very helpful! As always, a great video.
This was excellent. Many thanks. Saved me a lot of time.
Thanks. I've been manually putting in my addresses on a spread sheet. Wow this was so easy
Thank you lovely one for sharing this wee bit of information...
Thats really good information ... Thanks for your help 😊
As an estate agent, when you said this was gonna blow my mind I didn’t really believe you but I can confirm it did in fact blow my mind
OMG! this is so easy and brilliant. Thank you!
Great job Gary. Perhaps you would consider making a video specific to importing/exporting Google contacts? Also I’d like to see more information on how to use groups and the business card manager.
Wow...the hours I have spent on this problem. Thanks a million.
Thanks for saving me about 14 hours
Lifesaver! Thank you Gary
Genius! It was EASY! Thank you, you saved me $$ and time!
This doesn't answer what I originally searched but very glad I watched. I didn't know any of that.
Thank you so much!!!
Happy New Year, great video! Can you make one showing how to keep gmail contacts synced with icloud contacts?Thank you
life saver!! thank you
Thanks. Have you done a video on capturing csv files on the Mac? Non-contact csv files that is
You are amazing!
Have you covered using contact groups? I find it useful to find and and manage contacts by company or projects, but I find it difficult to use on my Mac and iPhone.
Lot of steps but worked great thanks. I got a club address file added to my contacts
Super helpful
I'm working on a church directory and some of the data is in Numbers. There is nothing coming up on Google search on how to create a directory on Mac in Numbers, Pages or a software or suggestion, nothing (or maybe I'm just terrible at searching). Wow, this was so helpful! Thank you so much!
Awesome!!!
You are amazing.
This is GREAT. Can you import to a specific group if you have your contacts organized in groups?
Did you get an answer to this? I need to know also
Thanks Garry this was very helpful in sorting my contacts. I have one problem when I import it back into contacts it only imports part of the address and puts the other part of the address into do not import. If i click on do not import and chang to home address it creates a new home address but with only part of the address can you tell me what I am doing wrong?
What can I say but a heartfelt “thank you”
谢谢 非常useful
Excellent! I love becoming an Apple Pro.
Game changer. Thank you Gary. Damn bro.... Have a Corona light on me. 🍺
Hi Gary - love your videos - thanks so much. I am trying to export lists of contacts to numbers but my mac wont let me do more than one at a time... Ventura on new MacBook Pro M2 - do you think this is an error or is there a setting i am missing?
Could be a particular contact that is causing trouble. Experiment.
Gary, even after 2 years your video is still helping lots. So clear and made so simple. Thanks! I can now clean up my contacts after years of being intimidated. I lost a big chunk of my contacts when I linked it to my work Outlook Contacts. I'm not sure how it all works but after leaving the company I lost a big part of my contact list on my iPhone and iCloud contact list. Here's a question, when I exported my contact list to a spreadsheet, it doesn't export the "Group". Can you advise how we can include that data with the export and re-import? Hope you can help.
Not sure. I suppose that is because groups are a separate list that contain links to contacts, not an item inside the contact itself.
Good!
Simply you are not brilliant you are super brilliant 👍
In theory this would be fantastic, however I'm finding that there seems to be a limit as to the number of cards you can drag and drop. For example I'm trying to d&d 100 cards to Numbers and it loses A LOT of info, or doesn't work at all. So I tried doing it in batches 5 per time and this works better (i.e. keeps all valuable data), but then this is prone to lots of clean up work getting columns to match up. Any help appreciated. Also wondering why just Export >Contacts> archive doesn't work well either. Lots of data missing in these exports. UGGH!
I see that you have icloud contacts and on my mac contacts. How cann you create contacts on your mac not being synced to cloud? Thanks
Gary, this question doesn’t have to do importing or exporting, but deals with "groups" in contacts. Emailing and texting using "groups" on the iMac and MacBook or other Apple computers works beautifully, but for the life of me, I cannot figure out how use existing groups ( I’ve build in the OS) in IOS on my iPhone and iPad. Have you considered making a video on how to use "groups" (from the contact book) on the iPad or iPhone? This has been driving me crazy for years! I would really appreciate your expertise on this issue.
The only way to use Groups on iOS is to use the name of the group when filling out the "to" line in an email. You can't edit or create groups on iOS.
@@macmost Thanks Gary. It’s a little confusing because when I open my contact book on my IOS I don’t see the group name listed, but when I tap on the "Group" tap in the top left corner I see the group name. I tested by typing the group name in the "to" window (mail) and was able to find the group, when I tapped it all the group members addresses auto filled as the should have. Guess I've been using the wrong mechanics. Thanks for your help.
@@cww922 Tapping on "Groups" at the upper left is the only place you'll see them, yes.
This seemed to drift away from how to export contacts from iMac to iPhone. As my phone rarely sync's up with my iMac contacts. Yes I have them in the Cloud. Never synced up.
Though it does not function for me, this looks fantastic.
I have 9.000 contacts across all accounts. However, when I test just one of them with 3.000 contacts, the numbers remain blank.
I make an effort to select only a few of them; but, if I select more than 50 and place them in the Numbers, application crushdown.
I made a test on a Macbook Pro M1. 8 GB
Tested this on current versions of macOS/Numbers and found the copy paste method was limited to 25 contact records. Any greater number resulted in the paste function being rejected.
Hi there,
Thank you so much for your great lessons.
I have actually multiple sheets for my invoices and I need to email only one open sheet(invoice)to my customer but I don’t know how to do that.
Also, I need to add up one cell from all sheets to determine the total sales.
Your help would be very much appreciated.
Regards,
Farrokh
Print that one sheet as a PDF and send it via Mail. You can calculate across sheets in the same document. Formulas can use cells from different tables in different sheets. Try it.
@@macmost Great. Thank you so much.
I appreciate your guidance. I’m trying to edit my 4k contacts (emails in other that should be home, etc) but I don’t want to lose images. I can clean up in numbers but how do I get back into contact w/images without duplicates or merge with ends up with same email in home and other? Thx so much. Yours in Service, Curtis
I wouldn't use this for cleaning up. 4K is a lot of contacts, I've never seen that many. Usually someone would be using one of those pro business apps for that many. I guess for Contacts there's no good way other than to budget time to do a few hundred per day until done.
@@macmost Trying to export apple contacts into numbers w/images: 2020 MacAir Monterey 12.1, Contacts Version 2498.2.1, Numbers version 11.2 (7032.0.145). When I drag/drop into blank template (per video) not all images come across. Still trying to figure out common factor. Regarding previous note, if I do the corrections as previous noted in numbers, export to CSV and then import back into contacts will it merge contacts or create duplicates?
I suspect this is getting deeper than you would care to dig in to. I did a test of two contacts into numbers, no problem, saved, then export to csv. Then import/open and get "The selected file does not appear to be a valid comma separated values (csv) file or a valid tab delimited file. Choose a different file.". checked file via text editor and it appears normal although I have a lot of information in notes with commas. Step 2, deleted notes column and it worked. Caveat is import won't work if there are commas in notes. Hope this helps someone else.
@@cjmatthes Yes, testing and experimenting is the way to go here.
Is there a limit to number of contact records that can drag-dropped into Numbers when setting up Numbers table for limited number of contact fields? fails to execute after about 40 contact records
No limit like that. It is likely that your 41st contact has something different about it that is causing a problem.
Gary, I have an issue with some contacts on my Mac. I do have iCloud sync turned on but for some reason some numbers that I have saved as contacts on my phone, don't show as saved contacts on my Mac when they message me. The saved contact will just look like a random number. Ive tried toggling on & off iCloud contacts but can't find a solution anywhere online. have you heard of this issue before? Any help?
Thanks for your content!
Hard for me to say would could be wrong there, sorry. If the number is assigned to a contact on your phone, then it should use that name when you get a message. Maybe they are messaging you using a email address (iMessage Apple ID) instead of their phone number, and you don't have that email address assigned to the same contact?
Question Gary - can you export all your contacts, edit and delete duplicates, and then replace all contacts with the new file?
Much better to just do that inside the Contacts app. There's even a function to look for duplicates, and also to Merge cards.
@@macmost Thank you! That worked perfectly.
It seems you can only import (drag in) up to 14 contacts at a time. Is there a way around this? Thanks!
There's no limit like that. Maybe in your case there is a problem with the 15th contact and so it stops there?
very useful info. however i would ask for a help; after creating columns in Numbers ( version 12 ) and exporting as CSV file, next step is importing a file to Contacts (Version 2498.4). In Contacts clicking Import file, try to open created CSV file, and an error with message: The selected file does not appear to be a valid comma separated values (csv) file or a valid tab delimited file. Choose a different file.
Any advise? thx
Sounds like the file includes something that Contacts doesn't like. Export what you have in Contacts and look at it in TextEdit as reference. See the columns there and compare that to what you have in your CSV. It could also be a particular entry that is causing trouble, like maybe a bad character in an entry.
@@macmost thanks a lot
I’m having the same error 😢 have you managed to correct it?
Is there any limitation on how many records you can export into numbers, I have 300+ contacts and it will not allow me to do this in one go, i need to do a few records at at time. Any ideas. Tx Doug
I have the same problem.
I think Mac's Contact database is awful. I have FileMaker, but it's too complicated. I loved Bento, but unfortunately Apple discontinued it. What is your advice for a suitable replacement for Bento?
Hey thanks for the explanation! I'm having an issue though, when I import to Contacts, a popup appear telling me "Text file import Failure: The selected file does not appear to be a valid comma separated values (csv) file or a valid tab delimited file. Choose a different file." I tried with CSV files created in Numbers just as you showed, first with a large number of contacts, then with only 1 contact, and same issue. I tried changing the file name to a shorter one (even with only one word) and nothing, the same error. Can you tell what can it be? Thanks!
It doesn't like something about your file. Export a contact to csv and then compare that to what you have. Make sure the column titles match exactly.
Thanks bro! After a more thorough revision I found out that Numbers was creating the CSV file with semicolons instead of colons so that was it! Using find and replace and voila!
HELP>>>>your import works great, except NOTES ins not imported into Numbers...Is there a solution?
You'll need to experiment. Make sure the Notes are these in the spreadsheet, represented correctly, and maybe try them in groups to see if there is one or more that have special characters or something that are stopping it from working. Worse case just copy and paste the notes that are missing manually.
Why it is not working on Windows OS?
Further to my previous comment and having spent two days talking to Apple help they were unable to resolve the problem of contact addresses being split up when importing from numbers using CSV file. My mac is a 2014 with Big Sur 11.7.10 and the method of importing contacts from numbers using CSV does not work because it consistently only imports part of the address. This happens even if the file is exported from Contacts to Numbers by drag and drop, is not changed and then exported from Numbers to a CSV file and imported to Contacts. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution.
I would experiment with the addresses. See what, exactly is causing the split there by trial and error. Then once you have figured out a format that works, change your CSV to only have addresses in that format.
In order to eliminate any issues I opened a new user on my computer and created to new contacts with exactly the same format dragged them into Numbers, exported them to CSV file and imported that file into Contacts and had exactly the same problem.@@macmost
I was trying to export my contacts using your method dragging all contacts into numbers, but it wouldn't show in numbers. I have an new iMac. Is that the issue. I love this video though and have subscribed to your channel. I am a new Mac user with very little skill. But, managing through it. Let me know if there is an alternate method or if there is a step missing?
That's the way to do it. Try it again and make sure you do every step.
@@macmost Thank you. Just did it again, following your instructions, but it still didn't copy to the numbers sheet. Not sure what else to do. :{
@@isabeltrevisan821 Try creating a new Numbers document and immediately selecting just two Contacts, and dragging them to that table. Do it exactly as I show.
@@macmost I tried two and it worked. Will I have to do two at a time?
It only copied the emails only.
So, can I call you MacGod!
I did this step by step and this 918 files will not drop into Numbers. Just pulls to the edge of the Contact sheet and stops. Any thoughts? Thank You
Hard to tell what could be wrong. Continue to experiment and try things.
is there a size limit? I have 1300 contacts and when I drag them in it pretends to be importing but then nothing is on the spreadsheet
I don't think so. But perhaps you have an entry (or two) that cases a problem. So do it in smaller groups and test.
Hi Gary, I just tried this, but when I drag the contacts into numbers, nothing shows up. Does it still work?
Perhaps you have a contact that has a piece of data that is getting in the way. Try importing only a few at a time, systematically, until you find the culprit.
Why is it that every time I get an email with an attachment of some UA-cam video or clip, I have to download it to my downloads folder? Why can it not just play as it does on my I Phone? Do I need to change some setting in my I Mac computer? It would be great if you could cover this in one of your You Tube videos or send me the link if you have already covered it. Thanks Gary.
Hard to say as it probably depends on the way the email was composed. I'm not sure what you are dealing with as a "UA-cam video" would be something you play in a web browser or in an app, not something you download.
@@macmost I would get an email with an attachment at the bottom of the email which might be an mp3 or mp4 file for example and if I click on the attachment it wants me to download it to my downloads folder. So now when I get an email from a friend like that, rather than fill my computer with these downloaded files, I just open the email with my phone and the file plays right away. That is how I feel it should operate on my I Mac computer but it doesn't. Thanks for your speedy reply Gary.
@@khill50able Oh, so nothing to do with UA-cam, OK. It probably depends on how the file was attached. You can view files without downloading them if they are attached. But if they are links to files, then you don't yet have the file until you download it. Lots of other factors too.
@@macmost I think I have solved my own problem Gary. I quit running my gmail through Safari and just open my mail straight through Mail and it seems to work fine opening without having to download. Thanks again for your help and suggestions.
Hey Gary. I went to where you said to go on my iPhone. the iPhone is set at high efficiency. so do I leave it there or should I put it on most compatible ? Will that make it to where when I go to pictures I could change it from JPEG to PNG and notHEIG OR HEIC ????
Thank you for this very helpful video! I am having an error when trying to import my contacts from a CSV file. I followed the steps you suggested and also tried converting the list I have in Excel directly to a CSV file, but it is not adding the commas "," after each email. I noticed this when I opened it in the TextEdit app. I tried manually adding the commas, removing a few ">" that I found, using just a few emails from the list, and I still get this error: "Text File Import Failure: The selected file does not appear to be a valid comma separated values (csv) file or a valid tab delimited file. Choose a different file.". Can you help me fix this issue? I also read that a few other people were having this issue and I followed you recommendations but still had the same error.
The C in CSV is for "comma" so I'm not sure why you aren't getting a comma there.
@@macmost haha yeah exactly, so I don't know why it is not generating them either....and even when I manually add them, the CSV file will still not import to the contacts
@@deannadavoli Maybe this is a language issue? For instance in some languages a comma is used as a decimal and a period for a separator. Something like that?
Can you help me with how to delete multiple contacts?
Just select them and press Delete.
@@macmost how did I not know that. Thanks dude. You are my Mac god.
Dragging and dropping doesn’t work for me. As soon as I click to drag, Numbers disappears. I’ve tried opening Contact and Numbers in split screen but although that keeps Numbers visible, as the cursor with the number of contacts reaches the split and the edge of Numbers, the number of contacts disappears and it turns into a regular cursor. Nothing is dropped. What am I doing wrong?
Not sure. Try doing it with two windows instead of Split View.
Same issue, not working when doing what you suggested. Help? :) @@macmost
@@milesmalachowski5542 Sorry, I don't know what the problem could be. There isn't enough information in the description for me to get a clear picture of what actions are being taken and what the resulting problem looks like.
@@macmost I replicated exactly what you are doing on your video, but it doesn't copy over the contact info. I have tired single contacts and groups, nothing will stick. I am on a MacBook Air M1 2020 Sonoma 14.1.2. I would LOVE to see this work and truly enjoy your tutorials.
I have meticulously followed the example in the video and noticed that at 1:56, when you drag the contacts onto the spreadsheet, a green border highlights around the entire spreadsheet just before you "drop" them. I do not get that green border. That is the only difference I can see. @@macmost
I found a way...in the numbers app, add the column "Notes". When you import into Contacts, your new column will exist.....
This is great but it did not import the 'notes'
This absolutely does not work for me. It has crashed twice, then did an endless hang.
Ok great…so how do they get to a PC now?
On Windows? So you want to sync your contacts between Mac and Windows?
Tried this technique to export Contacts into Numbers. But it does not work. Does. Not. Work. Apple engineers are working on the solution behind the scenes. Wish I knew when they'd have a solution.
Chances are it has to do with a particular item in a contact. Try exporting different contacts and experimenting to figure out which item(s) could be the problem.
It would have helped a bit more to show an actual import from something like a Yahoo or Outlook address book export.
What about Google? Or corporate or school systems? There are many. Instead of just helping the people that use one or two particular systems, I wanted to give you the knowledge to get the job done no matter what system you are coming from, or even if this is just your own personal database.
Hi Gary. Can you show me how to change a HEIC to a PNG. The pictures came from my iPhone and they’re not showing JPEG it’s showing HEIC. I know how to change a JPEG to a PNG. But it won’t let me change the HEIC TO A PNG.
Christina, I think I can answer you, I have just done this on my iPhone, . Go into camera in settings. Then Format, which will give you options for High Efficiency and Most Compatible. The latter, exports as JPEG. I had the same problem as you. Hope this helps
Well try. THANKS
I went to where you told me to go to and my phone is set to high efficiency. So do I leave it there or should I put it on most compatible to make sure that would be a JPEG and not a HEIG OR HEIC
@@christinabarnes1105 I changed to most compatible, which will export at JPEG.
WHAT THE HELL IS "SHIFT CLICK" ?!?!
Hold the Shift key down on your keyboard and click with your mouse or trackpad. You can also Command click, Option click, and Control click in some situations. And combinations too.
You lost me at importing.