How do I export my LinkedIn contacts?
Go to Settings, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data and request the archive with Connections. LinkedIn emails you a download link; the zip contains Connections.csv with first name, last name, profile URL, company, position and connection date. Email addresses are only included when the connection allows it, so most rows have none.
How to do it
- Request the archive. LinkedIn: Me, Settings and Privacy, Data privacy, Get a copy of your data. Choose the larger data archive, including connections, then Request archive.
- Download Connections.csv. LinkedIn emails a download link when the archive is ready, typically within 48 hours. The link expires after 72 hours.
- Skip the header notes. The CSV starts with a few lines of notes before the column names. Remove them before importing.
- Clean and segment. Normalise company names, group by role or industry, mark people you know well.
- Import. Most CRMs (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce) import CSV directly. Map name, company, title and LinkedIn URL.
Your options
| Option | Effort | Catch |
|---|---|---|
| Official data export | Request, wait for the email | Raw CSV, few emails |
| Scraping extensions | Install, run | Against LinkedIn's user agreement; accounts get restricted |
| Sales Navigator | Paid seat | Lists stay inside LinkedIn |
| TODO for AI | One message | Works on the official export only, so no extra emails |
Watch the agent do it
A real run on sample files. Yours starts from here.
The cleaned file is ~/work/linkedin/Connections_clean.csv (shown above). It has 57 contacts, and 30 of them are tagged as decision makers.
- Notes header: I removed LinkedIn's "Notes:" lines from the top, so the file now starts at the column headings.
- Duplicates: I found none. I checked for repeated rows, profile URLs and emails, and nothing matched, so all 57 contacts are still in the file.
- Decision-maker tag: a new column,
Decision Maker, says Yes or No. It's Yes for C-level titles (CEO, CTO, CFO, COO), Founder or Co-founder, Owner, President, VP, Head of, Director, and Managing Partner.- Yes (30): CEO, CTO, Chief Financial Officer, Co-founder & COO, Founder, Owner, Managing Director, Director of Operations, VP Sales, Head of Marketing, Head of Growth.
- No (27): Account Executive, Sales Development Rep, Recruiter, Product Designer, Software Engineer, Junior Developer, Data Analyst, Marketing Manager, HR Business Partner.
Decision for you: there are two Sarah Miller entries:
- Managing Director at Oakridge Consulting, profile
/in/sarah-miller-601, connected 2024 - CEO at Brightline Labs, profile
/in/sarah-miller-dup, connected 2019
The company, title and date are all different, so I kept both. But the second profile URL ends in "-dup", which suggests it may be a duplicate account. If it is, delete the Brightline row before you import.
The script is clean.py in the same folder, so you can run it again on a future export.