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Quick Answer

In classic Outlook, click File > Open & Export > Import/Export, then pick Export to a file or Import from another program or file and choose Comma Separated Values.

How to Import and Export Contacts in Outlook ​

Applies to: Microsoft Outlook (classic desktop, new Outlook for Windows, Outlook on the web); Microsoft 365, Outlook 2021, Outlook 2019
Article Type: How-To
Last Updated: 2026-07-29

Summary ​

This article shows you how to export your Outlook contacts to a .csv file, import a contact list back in, and control the two decisions that determine whether the result is a clean address book or a folder full of nameless entries: duplicate handling and field mapping. It also covers moving contacts across from Gmail and repairing accented names that arrive as nonsense characters.

Prerequisites ​

  • Classic Outlook for Windows for the full Import and Export Wizard, including field mapping. New Outlook and Outlook on the web have a reduced version covered in Step 6.
  • A spreadsheet app such as Excel if you need to inspect or edit the .csv before importing. Notepad works for the encoding fix in Step 7.
  • No admin rights are required for any step in this guide.

Instructions ​

1. Export Your Contacts to a CSV File ​

Exporting writes every contact into one comma-separated file. It is the right first move before any import, because it gives you both a backup and a template of the exact column headers Outlook understands.

  1. Open classic Outlook and click File at the far left of the ribbon. The backstage view opens on the Account Information page.
  2. Click Open & Export in the left column, then click Import/Export in the pane on the right. The Import and Export Wizard opens.
  3. Under Choose an action to perform, select Export to a file and click Next.
  4. Under Create a file of type, select Comma Separated Values and click Next. Older builds label this Comma Separated Values (Windows). The other option, Outlook Data File (.pst), produces a full Outlook-format archive rather than a spreadsheet.
  5. In the folder tree under Select folder to export from, click Contacts beneath your mailbox name, then click Next. If you keep several address books, expand each account and pick the correct one — the tree shows every Contacts folder in your profile.
  6. Click Browse, choose a location such as Documents, type a filename such as contacts-2026-07-29.csv, and click OK. Click Next.
  7. Click Finish. A small progress window appears and closes on its own. Large contact folders take under a minute.

Verification: Open the file in Excel. Row 1 holds the column headers — First Name, Last Name, Company, E-mail Address, and around 90 others. Every contact occupies one row beneath it. Empty columns are normal; Outlook writes every field it supports whether or not you use them.

Tip: Keep that exported file. When you later need to import a list from somewhere else, paste the new data underneath Outlook's own header row and the import needs no mapping at all.

2. Import a CSV File of Contacts ​

The same wizard runs in the other direction. Two screens inside it decide whether the result is usable, so they get their own sections below.

  1. Click File > Open & Export > Import/Export to open the Import and Export Wizard.
  2. Select Import from another program or file and click Next.
  3. Select Comma Separated Values and click Next.
  4. Click Browse, select your .csv, and click OK. The path appears in the File to import box.
  5. Choose one of the three Options radio buttons beneath it — Step 3 explains what each one does — then click Next.
  6. Under Select destination folder, click Contacts beneath the account you want the entries to live in, then click Next.
  7. The final screen shows a checkbox reading Import "yourfile.csv" into folder: Contacts and two buttons on the right: Change Destination... and Map Custom Fields.... Do not click Finish yet. Go to Step 4 and check the mapping first.

Tip: For a file you have not imported before, send it to a test folder instead of your real address book. Right-click Contacts in the folder list, click New Folder, name it Import test, then use Change Destination... on that final wizard screen to point at it. If the result is a mess, delete one folder instead of untangling hundreds of contacts.

3. Choose How Outlook Handles Duplicates ​

The Options group on the file-selection screen holds three radio buttons. Outlook decides what counts as a duplicate by matching the Full Name field, not the email address — so Dave Smith and David Smith are two different people to Outlook, while two entries both named Dave Smith with different addresses collide.

  • Replace duplicates with items imported — the incoming contact wins and overwrites the existing one completely, including fields your file leaves blank. Use this when the .csv is the newer, authoritative copy.
  • Allow duplicates to be created — nothing is overwritten. You end up with two entries for every match. This is the default and the safest starting point, because you can delete extras but you cannot un-overwrite.
  • Do not import duplicate items — the existing contact wins and the incoming duplicate is skipped. Use this when you are topping up an address book that is already correct.

To review the result afterwards, go to People, and on the Home tab open the Current View gallery and select Phone. That gives you a sortable table; click the Full Name column header to sort alphabetically, and duplicates line up next to each other.

4. Map Custom Fields So the Data Lands in the Right Columns ​

This is the step that decides whether the import is clean or garbage. Outlook matches your file's column headers against its own field names, and anything it does not recognise is dropped silently.

  1. On the last screen of the import wizard, click Map Custom Fields.... A dialog titled Map Custom Fields opens.
  2. Read the two panes. From: on the left lists the column headers found in your file. To: on the right lists Outlook's contact fields, grouped under collapsible headings such as Name, Address, and Phone. Click the + beside a group to expand it — Name opens into Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, and Suffix.
  3. Look for headers in the left pane that have nothing beside them in the Mapped from column on the right. Those are the fields about to be discarded.
  4. Drag a header from the left pane and drop it onto the Outlook field you want it in. The header name appears in the Mapped from column next to that field, confirming the link.
  5. Click Clear Map to strip every mapping and start from scratch, or Default Map to restore Outlook's original guesses if you have made things worse.
  6. Click Previous and Next at the top right of the dialog to page through real records from your file. The sample values update as you move, so you can confirm that Smith is landing in Last Name rather than Company.
  7. Click OK to return to the wizard, then click Finish. A progress bar appears and the contacts land in the folder you chose.

The two failures that account for most bad imports:

  • A single Name column. Many exports write the full name into one column rather than splitting it. Outlook maps it to nothing, and every contact arrives with a blank name and an email address only. Drag Name onto Full Name under the Name group and Outlook splits it into first and last for you.
  • Unrecognised phone headers. Column names like Phone 1 - Value or Mobile do not match Outlook's field names. Drag each one onto Business Phone, Mobile Phone, or Home Phone as appropriate.

Verification: Before clicking OK, page through three records with Next and check that the name, the email address, and one phone number all sit in the right rows. Thirty seconds here saves an hour of cleanup.

5. Move Contacts From Gmail or Another Provider ​

Google's export offers a format built specifically for Outlook, which removes almost all the mapping work in Step 4. Pick it deliberately — the default is not it.

  1. Go to contacts.google.com in your browser and sign in.
  2. Click Export in the left sidebar, under the Fix & manage heading. A dialog titled Export contacts opens.
  3. Choose what to export at the top: Contacts for everything, or a specific label.
  4. Under Export as, select Outlook CSV. Do not select Google CSV (its headers do not match Outlook's) or vCard (Outlook imports those one contact at a time).
  5. Click Export. The file downloads as contacts.csv, usually to your Downloads folder.
  6. Import it using Step 2. The mapping in Step 4 needs no changes for this format, but check it anyway.

The column headers Outlook recognises without any mapping are the ones its own export writes: Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Suffix, Company, Department, Job Title, Business Street, Business City, Business State, Business Postal Code, Business Country/Region, Business Phone, Business Fax, Home Phone, Mobile Phone, E-mail Address, E-mail 2 Address, E-mail 3 Address, Web Page, Birthday, Categories, and Notes. Match your header row to these names and the import maps itself.

Other sources:

  • iCloud and Apple Contacts export vCard files (.vcf), which Outlook handles one contact at a time. To move a whole address book, import the .vcf into Google Contacts first, then export it again as Outlook CSV.
  • A phone's contact list normally exports as .vcf too. Same route.
  • Another Outlook profile or an old PC is a straight Step 1 export followed by a Step 2 import. If you are setting up a replacement machine, How to Transfer Files and Settings to a New Work Computer covers everything else that needs to travel with you.

6. Import and Export Contacts in Outlook on the Web ​

New Outlook for Windows and the browser version share one interface, and neither has the Import and Export Wizard. They use a smaller tool that works well for Outlook-formatted files.

  1. Go to outlook.office.com and sign in with your work account, or open new Outlook for Windows.
  2. Click the People icon in the navigation rail down the left edge of the window. Your contact list fills the page.
  3. Click Manage on the toolbar above the contact list. Some builds label this button Manage contacts. A dropdown opens.
  4. To export: click Export contacts. Choose which contact folder to export in the pane that opens, then click Export. Your browser downloads a file named contacts.csv.
  5. To import: click Import contacts, then click Browse and select your .csv. Click Import. A progress message appears, followed by a confirmation showing how many contacts were added.

Note: There is no Map Custom Fields step on the web. The importer accepts only the header names it already knows and discards every other column without telling you. If your file came from anywhere other than Outlook or Google's Outlook CSV export, import it in classic Outlook (Step 2) where you can map the fields, or correct the header row yourself first using the list in Step 5.

The two sides talk to each other, so a file exported on the web imports cleanly into classic Outlook and the reverse is also true. If you are unsure which version you are looking at, Understanding Outlook Versions — Classic vs. New vs. Web settles it in about ten seconds.

7. Fix Accented Names That Import as Garbled Text ​

José Álvarez arrives as José Ãlvarez. Müller becomes Müller. This is an encoding mismatch: the file was written in one character set and read in another, and every accented character turns into two nonsense ones.

The cause is almost always Excel. Its plain CSV (Comma delimited) save format writes in the system's regional character set, which cannot represent every accent — so the characters are damaged in the file before Outlook ever sees it.

Fix it in Excel:

  1. Open the .csv in Excel.
  2. Click File > Save As, then click Browse to open the Save As dialog.
  3. Open the Save as type dropdown and select CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv). This sits directly above or below the plain CSV (Comma delimited) (*.csv) entry — check which one you have highlighted before saving.
  4. Give the file a new name so the original survives, then click Save. Excel warns that some workbook features are lost in a CSV; click Yes.
  5. Re-run the import from Step 2.

Fix it in Notepad when Excel is not available:

  1. Right-click the .csv in File Explorer, point to Open with, and click Notepad.
  2. Click File > Save As.
  3. At the bottom of the Save As dialog, set the Encoding dropdown to UTF-8.
  4. Click Save, confirming the overwrite if prompted.

If the names already look wrong when you open the file in Excel, the file itself is often intact and Excel guessed the encoding wrong on the way in. Close it without saving, then in a blank workbook click Data > From Text/CSV, select the file, and in the preview window set File Origin to 65001: Unicode (UTF-8). The accents in the preview correct themselves. Click Load, then save the result as CSV UTF-8.

Note: Excel damages more than accents. It strips leading zeros from phone numbers, so 01632 960123 becomes 1632960123, and it rewrites long digit strings into scientific notation such as 1.23457E+15. If you are only moving a file between two mail systems, do not open it in Excel at all — export, then import, and let the accents and the zeros travel intact.

Troubleshooting ​

WARNING

Replace duplicates with items imported overwrites existing contacts field by field, including with blank values where your file has empty columns. There is no undo. Export your current contacts (Step 1) before running any import that uses this option, so you have a file to restore from.

Symptom / ErrorPotential CauseSolution
Contacts imported with a blank name and only an email addressName column was not mappedDelete them and re-import, using Map Custom Fields... to drag your file's Name column onto Full Name (Step 4).
Accented characters show as é, ü, or ñFile saved in the wrong character setRe-save the file as CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) in Excel, then import again (Step 7).
Every contact was imported twiceAllow duplicates to be created was selectedSort People by Full Name in the Phone view, delete the duplicate set, and re-import with Do not import duplicate items (Step 3).
Import/Export is missing from the File menuRunning new Outlook, not classicThe wizard exists only in classic Outlook for Windows. Use People > Manage > Import contacts instead (Step 6), or switch versions.
A file error has occurred or the file cannot be accessedFile open elsewhere, or on a synced driveClose Excel, copy the .csv to a local folder such as C:\Temp\, and import from there. OneDrive-synced and network locations lock the file mid-import.
Phone numbers lost their leading zeroExcel reformatted the column as a numberExcel strips leading zeros the moment it opens a CSV. Export a fresh copy from the source and import it without opening it in Excel (Step 7).