How to export your contacts from an iPhone

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

Getting your contacts off an iPhone is more roundabout than it should be — there's no "export all" button on the phone itself. But there are a few dependable routes, and they all produce a file you can back up, move to a new phone, or fold in with the address books from your other accounts. Here's each reliable way, and what to do once you have the file.

Why people export iPhone contacts

Almost everyone reaches for this for the same handful of reasons: they're switching to a new phone and want everyone to come along, they want a real backup they control rather than trusting it all to the cloud, or they're pulling several accounts together — an iPhone, an old Google account, a work address book — into one place. The catch is that the same person usually ends up on more than one card: the friend who's in your iCloud and your Gmail shows up twice, each copy carrying a slightly different slice of their phone numbers and emails. Over the years an iPhone quietly accumulates this kind of overlap — an old number that never got deleted, a work email on one card and a personal one on another, the same person spelled two different ways. So exporting is really step one; tidying the overlap is step two, and it's the step most guides quietly skip.

The most dependable route: iCloud.com → Export vCard

If your contacts sync to iCloud (most iPhones do), the web interface is the most reliable way to get a complete export, and you don't even need the phone in your hand:

1. On any computer, sign in at iCloud.com and open Contacts.
2. Click any one contact, then press Cmd+A (Mac) or Ctrl+A (Windows) to select every card at once.
3. Click the gear menu in the lower-left corner and choose Export vCard…
4. Your browser downloads a single .vcf file containing every selected card.

That one file is the whole address book, in the standard vCard format, ready to import anywhere. Because it comes straight from iCloud it reflects exactly what's on your phone. Two small notes: the Cmd/Ctrl+A step is what makes this an all-contacts export — if you only highlight a few cards, only those few get written — and the file iCloud hands you is a single .vcf with every card stacked inside it, not a folder of one file per person. Keep it somewhere you'll find it again; it's a genuine backup you own.

On a Mac: the Contacts app

If you're on a Mac with your contacts synced there, you can skip the browser entirely:

1. Open the Contacts app.
2. Click a contact and press Cmd+A to select all of them.
3. Go to File → Export… → Export vCard… and choose where to save.

You get the same kind of single .vcf file, holding every card you selected.

What about CSV?

Here's the honest limitation: iOS has no built-in "export all to CSV". The phone and iCloud speak vCard, so a .vcf is the way off the device itself — don't go hunting for a CSV button that isn't there. There is one exception worth knowing: if your iPhone contacts are actually synced to a Google account (rather than, or in addition to, iCloud), you can sign in at contacts.google.com and export them as a Google CSV from there instead. Either format is fine — the important thing is simply to get a complete export.

Then fold it in with your other address books

An iPhone export on its own is rarely the whole picture. Line it up next to your Google export, an old Android backup, or a work address book and the overlap is everywhere — the same person, spread across several cards, each with a piece of the truth. Joining the files is easy; recognising that three cards are the same person and folding them into one complete entry is the part that actually takes work. iCloud's own "merge" tools only see the iCloud account and match cautiously, so cross-account and half-complete duplicates slip straight through — and doing it by hand across hundreds of cards is exactly the chore nobody finishes.