If our contacts are mainly on social networks it could be a good idea import them as email contactsespecially if they have shared an e-mail address in their social profiles and we use social networks mainly for work.Looking at the three main email services (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail e Outlook.com), let’s see together how import Facebook contacts as email addresses to your online address book. You can also import Email addresses from Linkedin, Instagram and Twitter.
READ ALSO -> How to send Email to a contact group
1) Export Facebook contacts
First we will have to create a CSV file with all contacts taken from the various personal social networks or from the social networks we manage.
Per export facebook contacts we open the personal page on the social network, press the profile image at the top right, click on Settings and privacy -> Settings -> Privacywe select the menu Your information on Facebookwe press on View next to the entry Download profile informationwe set as format JSON and as a date range From the beginningwe press on Deselect allwe tick the item Friends and followers and click on below Request a download.
After a few minutes we will have access to the requested file on the screen Files available: we press on Download to download the compressed file in ZIP format containing numerous files; for convenience we extract everything into a folder using a program like 7-Zip.
Export contacts to other social networks
To export contacts from other social networks, it is advisable to follow the specific procedures based on the type of account in use:
- We merge Instagram contacts with Facebookso as to have Instagram friends also on Facebook (and vice versa).
- We extract LinkedIn contacts using the personal privacy menu or by connecting LinkedIn to Yahoo! Mail.
- Download Twitter data archive and fetch contacts from followers list.
At the end of the process we will have a series of folders with JSON or HTML files, ready to be imported into the single CSV file in which we will insert all the e-mail contacts retrieved from the various social networks.
The only one that can be entered immediately is LinkedInwhat can be automatically synced with Yahoo! Mailimmediately displaying the contacts of the social network in the e-mail box.
2) Create CSV files
Now we can start creating the CSV filestarting from Facebook contacts and gradually adding contacts exported from other social networks.
To start we open Microsoft Excel on our PC, let’s go to the menu Datawe press up on Retrieve data -> From filewe press on And JSON and make sure to select the file friends.json in the folder of the previously extracted files.
It should be possible to import the personal data of all our contacts, but only if their privacy level permits the sharing of the email address. If we use a private profile, a lot of interesting data will certainly be missing, but if we export the data of those who follow one of our pages, the chances of finding an email address increase considerably.
Once the contacts have been imported, let’s go to the menu Fileclick on Save with namechoose the name and folder where to save the new file and choose CSV UTF-8 (comma delimited) (*.csv) as a file type, then press on Salva to start creating the CSV file with all contacts.
We can import the vast majority of files recovered from social accounts: in case of problems managing contact files, remember to open HTML files with any web browser and to open JSON files with advanced text file manager come Notepad++.
3) Import contacts into Gmail
Now that we have ours CSV file filled with phone contacts and email addresses of all our friends and followers we can import it into Gmail by opening the site Google Contactsby pressing the key It matters on the left side, by pressing on Select file and loading the CSV file created just now, let’s make sure that all the contacts are present and confirm to immediately add all the new contacts to the Google address book and the Gmail address book.
Per add LinkedIn contacts to Gmail we can import them directly from Yahoo! Mail, the only one that can be directly associated with the professional social network. In this case, just open the Gmail account management pagepress on Import messages and contacts, enter your Yahoo! Mail and import all the LinkedIn contacts that we had added to the mailbox.
4) Import contacts into Yahoo! Mail
If we use Yahoo! Mail we should already have LinkedIn contacts associated with the account and we can import the contacts that we have added to Gmail with the procedure seen in the previous chapter.
To import all the missing contacts we open the menu Import contacts from Yahoo! Mailwe press on It matters next to the entry Gmail and follow the procedure to merge all contacts in Gmail on Yahoo! Mail, including the contacts we had imported with the CSV file.
5) Import contacts into Outlook
Outlook users can now import contacts with CSV file with all contacts merged; we can use both the CSV file created manually by us and CSV file created by Yahoo! Mailthe only service that can bring together all your contacts and export them in comfort.
To import contacts from the CSV file created with Excel let’s go to the Outlook People pagepress on the top right Manage contactswe press on Import contacts and load the previously created CSV file, so that we can combine the manually exported contacts in the CSV file.
Alternatively we can bring together all contacts on Yahoo! Mail opening the menu again Import contacts from Yahoo! Mail and pressing up It matters next to the key LinkedInnext to the key Gmail and next to the key Outlook.
After having brought together all the contacts in this single account, press on the icon Contacts on the right side, click on the three dots and press on the item Export to a CSV fileso you can upload this file to both Gmail and Outlook.
To learn more we can read the help page for Yahoo! Mail on how to import and export CSV files.
Conclusions
Those who often work with social media know how important it is merge all your phone contacts and email contacts into one big address bookaccessible from any modern email service (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Outlook).
With the procedures described above we will be able to import social contacts in one big CSV fileso that it can be placed in the company mailbox or in the personal mailbox.
To learn more, we can also read our guides on how import vCard address book into Windows and Outlook and about how synchronize your Gmail address book with your Outlook address book.