Learn how to easily export your Mac contacts for easy sharing and backup purposes in this comprehensive guide.
Whether you want to share a contact card with someone or back up all your Mac contacts to your computer, there is an easy way to go at it. It’s actually just as easy to do that on your Mac as it is on your iPhone.
1) Launch the Contacts app on your Mac and click the name of the contact you want to share.
2) Click Share Contact from the bottom. On older versions of macOS, click the share button instead.
3) Share the contact via email, iMessage, or AirDrop. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’ll share via email, so click the Mail option.
This will open your Mail application, and the contact card will be automatically attached to the new email. Type in the recipient’s email address, add text to your email if you want to, then send it.
The person receiving this email will be able to save the contact card to their computer. Alternatively, they will be able to easily add this contact to Gmail or to their Mac or iPhone contacts.
Export one, selected, or all contacts as a vCard from your Mac
The method described above is great for sharing a contact, but what if you want to export one or more contacts to back them up to your computer?
There are two ways to export all your contacts at once on a Mac: the Apple-compatible-only way and the universal way.
The universal method will enable you to export all your contacts to a .vcf file (vCard), which will then be readable by virtually any operating system or email client in the world. If your goal is to export all your contacts and potentially share them with someone else who may not own a Mac, this is the approach you should take. Or else, skip to the next section.
1) Open the built-in Apple Contacts app on your Mac.
2) To export multiple contacts, hold the Command key and select all the desired contacts. And to select all, click any contact and then press the Command + A keys together. When one or more contacts are selected, they are highlighted in blue.
3) Click File > Export > Export vCard from the Contacts app menu bar.
4) This will create a .vcf file, a format widely used by most applications, whether on Android, iOS, Windows, or macOS. Choose where you want to save the contact card and click Save. Once the contact card has been saved to your computer, you’re free to do whatever you want with it. You may, for example, save it for later as some sort of backup. You may also share it with anyone you want by email or any other means.
Export all contacts as abbu file from Mac
The .abbu (Address Book Backup) file format is a proprietary format that’s only recognized by the macOS Contacts application. This means that you should only export your contacts to a .abbu file if you are 100% certain that you won’t need to import these contacts on a different operating system at a later date.
Remember that you won’t be able to import a .abbu file to any email client (i.e., Gmail wouldn’t let you import this format). This limitation makes it hard for me to recommend this file format as an export option, and I do prefer exporting as a .vcf file, as described above. But I’m not here to judge.
1) Go to the Contacts app on your Mac.
2) In the menu bar of the Contacts application, click File > Export > Contacts Archive.
3) You’ll now have the option to save the .abbu file of your exported contacts anywhere on your Mac. Click Save, and you’re done.
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