So, can you export your LinkedIn contacts? Yep. LinkedIn emails you a CSV of your first degree connections from the settings page, usually within ten minutes. Here's the catch, and the reason this page is long. Seven columns, mostly empty emails, nobody outside your network, and it starts going stale the week you download it. Whether that's useful really depends on your plan for it.
We double checked everything here with LinkedIn's help pages on October 3, 2026, and by exporting from one of our own accounts.
How do I export my LinkedIn contacts?
Short answer: it's buried in the privacy settings on desktop. Me, then Settings & Privacy, then Data privacy, then Get a copy of your data. Tick Connections, hit Request archive, wait about ten minutes for the email. Inside the zip you'll find Connections.csv, seven columns: First Name, Last Name, URL, Email Address, Company, Position and Connected On. Expect few emails, since only people who allowed it are included, and zero phone numbers, second degree contacts or Sales Navigator lists. To get them into a CRM you've got two roads. Import the CSV (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho and Salesforce all accept it, duplicate rules below), or save the people who matter one by one from their profile with a Chrome extension such as Ln2CRM, which picks up the missing fields and keeps records current.
Step by step: download your LinkedIn connections as a CSV
Why do people miss it? Because the export hides in the privacy settings, not on My Network. And it's desktop only, the mobile apps don't have it.
- Click the Me icon at the top of LinkedIn and pick Settings & Privacy.
- Open Data privacy in the menu on the left. Under "How LinkedIn uses your data" you'll see Get a copy of your data, though some accounts call it Download your data.
- Choose what to export. Want it quick? Tick just the Connections category. The slow route is "Download larger data archive", which throws in messages, invitations, profile fields, account history and whatever LinkedIn has inferred about you.
- Click Request archive. A link goes to your primary email, usually within ten minutes for a single category and within 24 hours for the big archive. It works for 72 hours.
- Download and unzip. Look for
Connections.csv. Went for the big archive? It'll be sitting with friends likemessages.csv,Invitations.csvandProfile.csv. - Clean the top of the file. LinkedIn sticks a few "Notes:" rows at the top of
Connections.csv, explaining why emails are missing. Delete them, so line one becomesFirst Name,Last Name,URL,Email Address,Company,Position,Connected On. Seen a CRM importer moan that it "cannot find the columns"? That's almost always why.
Does anyone get notified? No. LinkedIn doesn't tell your connections, and there's no limit, so request it as often as you like.
What is inside Connections.csv, and what is not
| Column | What you get | Caveat |
|---|---|---|
| First Name, Last Name | As written on the profile | Names with Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and other extended character sets can come through garbled; LinkedIn says the CSV and vCard formats do not support them |
| URL | The public profile URL, for example linkedin.com/in/jane-doe | This is the most valuable column: it is unique per person and does not change when they change jobs, so it is the right key for deduplication |
| Email Address | Only for connections who allow others to download their email | Usually blank for most rows; this is a privacy setting on their side, not a bug on yours |
| Company, Position | Current employer and title at the moment of export | A snapshot: titles drift within months and the file never updates |
| Connected On | The date you connected | Useful for tagging "network" versus "prospects" in the CRM |
And what's not in the file? Phone numbers, location, headline, industry, company size, company website, the LinkedIn member ID, anyone beyond your first degree, people you follow, saved leads and lists from Sales Navigator, and any trace of your conversations. So really it's a list of names with links. Good enough to seed a CRM, not good enough to sell from.
Why are the emails missing?
Why so few emails? Every member picks, under Settings, Data privacy, "Who can see or download your email address", whether connections can get their email in an export. Hardly anyone ever opens that setting, and newer profiles started with a stricter default, so most rows come out blank. You can't change it from your end. And those tools promising to "export emails from LinkedIn"? They don't read LinkedIn at all. They match names and companies against their own databases, which is a whole other product with its own accuracy and compliance issues. Need the email of someone missing from your file? How to find someone's email on LinkedIn goes through what works and what it costs.
Export LinkedIn contacts to Excel or Google Sheets
Hunting for an "export to Excel" button? There isn't one, the CSV is the export. A couple of tips, though:
- Google Sheets: File, Import, Upload. Accented names survive just fine. Get rid of the Notes rows first, or tell the importer to skip them.
- Excel: here's the gotcha. Double click the CSV and names like José or Zoë come out as garbage. Use Data, From Text/CSV, choose 65001: Unicode (UTF 8) as File Origin, and you're fine. Planning to add columns? Save as .xlsx.
Before anything goes into a CRM, we'd add three columns in the sheet. Source, something like "LinkedIn export 2026-10". Segment, prospect, customer, partner or personal. And a Keep flag. Honestly, out of 2,000 connections maybe a few hundred deserve a CRM record. Import everything and you'll be scrolling past recruiters and old classmates forever.
Can you export Sales Navigator lead lists?
Natively? No. Sales Navigator has no export button for saved leads, lead lists or search results on any tier, and the connections export only covers first degree connections, not leads you've saved. The one official way to get Sales Navigator data into another system is CRM Sync on Advanced Plus, which is sold by quote and works with Salesforce, HubSpot and Microsoft Dynamics, see the Sales Navigator pricing guide for numbers. Yes, there are scraper extensions that pull lists out of Sales Navigator, but they go against LinkedIn's terms and accounts do get restricted. For most teams the practical answer is saving each lead to the CRM from its lead page as you work the list, which is what the one at a time section covers. Cancelling a seat? Saved leads stay visible but frozen for 90 days, then they're gone. The full checklist is in the Sales Navigator alternatives guide.
How to import the CSV into your CRM without duplicates
Every big CRM imports CSVs. Where they differ is how they decide two rows are the same person, and that's exactly where a LinkedIn export trips up, because most rows have no email.
| CRM | Where | Dedupes on | What to do with a LinkedIn export |
|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Contacts, Import, File from computer | Email address (and record ID) | Rows without an email are always created as new contacts, so a second import of the same file doubles them. Import once, and map URL to a custom "LinkedIn URL" property. Details in importing LinkedIn contacts into HubSpot. |
| Pipedrive | Leads or Contacts, Import data, From a spreadsheet | Your choice of matching fields during import (name, email, phone, organization) | Create a custom person field "LinkedIn URL" first and map URL to it; match on that field for later imports. Company goes to Organization, Position to Job title. The Pipedrive integration guide covers the field setup. |
| Zoho CRM | Leads or Contacts, Import, From file | Email, or a field you choose, with skip or overwrite options | Map URL to a LinkedIn URL field and choose it as the duplicate check field; Zoho then lets you skip or overwrite matches on every later import. See the Zoho integration guide. |
| Salesforce | Data Import Wizard, Leads or Contacts | Name and email for Contacts, name and email or company for Leads | Decide Lead versus Contact before importing, add a LinkedIn URL field and map it. The wizard handles up to 50,000 rows. Walkthrough in importing LinkedIn contacts into Salesforce. |
Three rules for all four:
- Keep the URL column and give it a field. It's the only dependable key for a person on LinkedIn, and everything later, including the extension workflow below, matches on it.
- Import once, from a filtered sheet. Not your whole network, and never the same file twice.
- Tag the import. A source like "LinkedIn export 2026-10" lets you find that batch and fix it later.
The problem with a one time export
A CSV is a photo, not a live feed. On export day every Company and Position is right. Give it six months: a quarter of your prospects have new titles, some switched companies, and your CRM has no idea, because nothing links it back to LinkedIn. Plus you only got the fields LinkedIn chose to share. No chat history, no notes, and no clue which of those 2,000 rows are real deals.
Then there's scope. The export only covers people you're already connected with, and prospecting is mostly about people you're not, the second degree contact from search, the Sales Navigator lead, the person who replied to your post. None of them will ever show up in Connections.csv.
The other way: save LinkedIn contacts to your CRM one at a time, with full data
That's where a Chrome extension earns its keep, and full disclosure, Ln2CRM is ours. It runs on the LinkedIn profile page, on regular LinkedIn and in Sales Navigator, and talks to Pipedrive, HubSpot, Zoho or Salesforce through the CRM's own API. For the export problem, four things change:
- You know if they're already in the CRM. Before you click anything, there's a badge. We match on the LinkedIn URL first, then name and company, so a duplicate never gets made in the first place. You'll see it on every profile and every search result.
- It grabs what the CSV skipped. Headline, location, their current company with its LinkedIn page and website, job title, plus email or phone if they show it in contact info. Spot a typo? Fix it before it's saved.
- It works on people you're not connected to, since it reads the profile in front of you rather than your connections list. Sales Navigator lead pages included, no Advanced Plus seat required.
- Records don't go stale. Someone changed jobs? The extension notices the mismatch with your CRM and flags it on their profile, and one click updates the record. From the same panel you add notes and tasks and sync the LinkedIn conversation with timestamps. The record ends up with a story, not just a name.
| Question | CSV export from LinkedIn | Ln2CRM extension |
|---|---|---|
| Who is covered | First degree connections only | Anyone whose profile you open, including second degree and Sales Navigator leads |
| Fields | Name, URL, company, position, connected date; email for a minority | Name, URL, headline, title, company and company page, location, visible email and phone, plus notes, tasks and messages |
| Duplicates | Your problem at import time | Checked on the page before saving, by LinkedIn URL |
| Freshness | Snapshot, never updated | Flagged and updated when the profile changes |
| Sales Navigator | Not covered | Works on lead and account pages |
| Speed for 2,000 people | Ten minutes | Not the tool for bulk; it is for the people you actually work |
| Cost | Free | Free tier; Base $13 and Pro $18 a month, billed yearly (pricing) |
Which one should you use?
Our advice? Both, in this order. Do one export to seed the CRM with the slice of your network that belongs there, filtered in a sheet, tagged as an import, URL column mapped to a LinkedIn URL field. After that, stop exporting and save people from their profile as you go. The extension spots imported records by that same URL, so the two meet neatly instead of clashing. Teams that skip the export lose their warm network. Teams that keep exporting end up with a CRM of strangers and old job titles.
Exporting all your LinkedIn data: backup, GDPR or leaving LinkedIn
Want literally everything? The larger archive on the same page has it: profile, positions, education, skills, connections, invitations sent and received, messages, comments, reactions, saved items, ad targeting data and what LinkedIn has inferred about you. Give it up to a day, LinkedIn says 48 hours for some categories, and grab it within 72 hours of the email. Closing your account? Get this first, because afterwards it's gone. It's also the simplest way to make a GDPR or CCPA data access request. In the EU, EEA and Switzerland there's even a Member Data Portability API, though that's really one for developers.