How to export your contacts from an Android phone

By Michael, founder of ContactAttic · September 2026 · 6 min read

Getting your contacts off an Android phone is the first step to tidying them up — and Android gives you two good routes to do it. You can export straight from the phone's Contacts app as a vCard, or export from Google Contacts on the web as a vCard or a spreadsheet-friendly CSV. Here's how to do both, and what to do with the file once you have it.

Where your Android contacts actually live

Before you export, it helps to know that "your contacts" on an Android phone are usually not in one place. They're typically split across three stores:

• The SIM card — a small set of numbers saved directly on the SIM.
• The phone (device) account — contacts saved only to the handset itself.
• Your Google account — where most modern Android contacts sync, so they survive a lost or replaced phone.

That split is exactly where duplicates come from: the same person can exist as a SIM entry, a device entry, and a Google entry all at once, each holding a slightly different slice of their details. Keep that in mind — it matters when you go to clean things up later.

Route 1: Export from the phone's Contacts app

Every Android phone ships with a Contacts app that can write a .vcf vCard file. The exact wording varies a little by brand — Samsung, Google Pixel, Motorola and the rest each style the menus slightly differently — but the path is essentially the same everywhere:

1. Open the Contacts app.
2. Open the menu (the three-line or three-dot icon) and go to Settings, or look for Manage contacts.
3. Tap Export (often shown as Export to .vcf file or Export to storage).
4. Choose which account to export from if you're asked, then confirm.

The phone saves a .vcf file — usually into your Downloads folder or the internal storage. That file is now sitting on the phone, so the next job is to get it onto a computer where you can actually use it: connect the phone by USB and copy it across, email it to yourself, or drop it into a cloud folder (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive) and download it on the other side.

Route 2: Export from Google Contacts (the more complete route)

Because most Android contacts sync to your Google account, exporting from Google Contacts on the web usually captures more of them in one shot — and it lets you choose your format. On a computer:

1. Go to contacts.google.com and sign in with the same Google account your phone uses.
2. Select the contacts you want, or use Select all for everyone.
3. Open the menu and choose Export.
4. Pick a format: vCard (.vcf, best for importing back into phones and address books) or Google CSV (a spreadsheet layout, handy if you want to view or edit rows). Then Export to download the file.

Google also offers an "Outlook CSV" option, but for most people vCard or Google CSV is the right pick. Either way you now have a single file on your computer holding the contacts that were synced to your Google account.

vCard or CSV — which should you pick?

Both formats carry the same contacts; they just package them differently, and the right choice depends on what you plan to do next:

• vCard (.vcf) is the universal address-book format. Every phone and contacts app can import it directly, it preserves multiple emails, phone numbers and other fields cleanly, and it's the natural choice if your goal is simply to move your contacts to another device or account.
• Google CSV is a plain spreadsheet: one row per contact, one column per field. That makes it easy to open in Excel or Google Sheets to eyeball what you've got or hand-edit a few rows — but wide, awkward for contacts that have several numbers or addresses, and easy to break if you re-save it in the wrong encoding.

The good news is you don't have to agonise over it. If the file is heading somewhere that reads both, either export is fine — and you can even keep the vCard from your phone and a CSV from Google and combine them afterwards.

Now you have a file — what next?

Between the phone export and the Google export you may well end up with two files: a .vcf from the handset and a vCard or CSV from Google. Together they hold everyone you know — but with overlap, because the same people live in more than one of those stores. Importing both files somewhere new just carries all that duplication with them.

The tidy finish is to merge the exports into one clean set, folding each person into a single complete card. That's the job ContactAttic was built for.