Export LinkedIn Contacts – Plus Full Profiles and Email Addresses
Alfie Lambert • Updated 17 December 2021
If you’ve ever wondered how to export LinkedIn contacts, extract emails, automate lead-finding or generally extract data from LinkedIn – look no further.
Get 1,000 rows of data and 50 valid email exports every single month for free with Lix
In the 18 years since LinkedIn was launched it has become the single largest directory of businesses and business professionals in all of history. Boasting over 722 million members and 30 million companies, it is a veritable goldmine of data. Whether you’re a salesperson digging for leads or a marketer looking for influencers you can find them on LinkedIn.
The problem for many people however, is how do we extract that information from LinkedIn? It’s all well and good having access to the connections we’ve made, but when it comes time to organise and export that data LinkedIn often falls short.
LinkedIn offers a method that is quick and free, but will only export your connection’s name and current position. Not much data. Especially if you’re looking to build out a sales campaign or scour for your next big hire.
This article will explain how to export LinkedIn contacts and, depending on your desired outcome, full profiles and even email addresses into spreadsheets, cloud-based lists and your chosen CRM. This will allow you faster, organised access to your contacts for you to network, pitch to or build closer relationships with.
Export LinkedIn Contacts
You’ve had your LinkedIn profile for years, gradually building connections and forging relationships within your industry and beyond. Your contacts are a pool of useful information, potential clients and further networking opportunities. You have put in the leg work to build an impressive contact list – let’s use it.
Exporting LinkedIn contacts can be done directly from LinkedIn for free. Without the need for an additional tool. However, the free method has its limitations. If you don’t have the budget for an external aid to help with this process, you can skip to the free method.
If you’re looking for richer data, let’s take a look at Lix’s comprehensive way to export LinkedIn contacts. Lix’s dedicated LinkedIn data extraction tool comes with multiple options and features. Each designed for you to build a more complete data package. Lix gives you 50 free emails and 1,000 rows of search data every single month – so if you want the fastest, easiest method, sign up for a free account and get started!
Here’s our step by step guide to exporting your LinkedIn contacts, followed by a handy video!
1. Ensure you are logged in to LIX and that your LIX browser extension is enabled.
When you initially sign up for LIX we will detect which internet browser you are using and provide you with the correct guide for that browser. We currently support all major browsers, so whether you’re a Chrome wiz, Safari stalwart or Opera fanatic we have you covered!
(Psst… We’ve listed the guides here in case you didn’t find yours!)
- Safari
- Edge
- Internet Explorer
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Opera
2. Click on ‘My Network’ in the top toolbar, then ‘Connections’ on the left
This will take you through to your connection list, ready to export. You can sort the list by recently added (your most recent connections), first name or last name. You can also filter this list using the powerful LinkedIn search filters.
First, ‘My Network’:
Then, ‘Connections’:
3. Click on your (now activated) LIX browser extension
Whenever you land on a page with data that LIX can extract, you’ll notice your browser extension activate, or light’s up. That means you’re ready to hit the button and open the LIX toolbar.
Depending on your browser, it should look like something like this:
4. Select your options from the LIX tool
As the LIX tool unfolds, you will notice a number of options for you to choose from.
Left Column Options
The options on the left determine how many results to extract, and in what format to export your LinkedIn connections. You can choose to export as Excel, or CSV depending on which you prefer to use – or which option is best supported by your chosen CRM. Most CRM systems will allow you upload contacts in either of these formats.
If you’re using the LIX Lists feature, you can select which ‘project’ or list you want to export these results to. This is especially helpful if you’re exporting multiple searches and want to de-duplicate results.
Lastly for the left-hand option column, we need to select the number of results. Your selection here is impacted by your selections in the right-hand column
Right Column Options
We delve into these options further down the page. In a nutshell, these options determine whether you want to use the Lix email-finder to generate 98% accurate validated email addresses for your contacts, if you want to extract their full profiles or whether you want to use the automated profile viewer.
The important thing to note here is the effect these options have on the number of results you would like to export. LIX cleverly keeps your data extract limits under LinkedIn’s fair use threshold. This means your account is always safe from violating the rules.
The threshold is 1,000 viewed pages per day. So, if you decide to export just the search results as you see them (with or without emails) you can export a whopping 10,000 contacts in a single day.
If you opt for ‘Deep Profile’ this will extract all the data from your contact’s full LinkedIn profile, meaning you can extract up to 1,000 in a day.
‘Generate Emails’ will use LIX’s intelligent email finder to search the web and provide you with 98% accurate validated addresses for each contact, automatically, within minutes. This is an extremely powerful tool for outreach and lead generation!
‘View Profiles’ is an automated profile viewer, recommended for use in People searches rather than with your current contacts. It automatically views the profiles of people in a given list so that they get a notification letting them know you stopped by. It can be a great way to warm up potential new connections.
Want to know more about these options? Jump to Generate Emails, Deep Profile, View Profiles.
5. Selected your options? Now LIX IT!
Once you’ve made a decision about what kind of data you want from your LinkedIn contact export, it’s time to hit the button and extract those results.
As your export processes, you will notice your LinkedIn moving through the relevant pages in the background as LIX does its work. Once it’s ready, you will see a new button appear:
Your results are ready to be downloaded! Hit the button and download your exported LinkedIn contacts in your chosen format.
If you opted to use a project, you can head back over to lix-it.com and head to your log in area. Here you will see the ‘Projects’ tab with your list ready to be exported and sent to your email address.
We have also put this step by step guide into a handy video if you prefer to learn audio-visually!
If you’ve followed along with the steps so far, you have exported your LinkedIn contacts into a spreadsheet and are ready to get to work. Whatever your desired outcome is for the data, you should have everything in place to make that happen.
If you’ve used LinkedIn’s free method, you will only have a list of your connections and not the added data we provide with the LIX tool. Extracting with LIX allows you to gain richer data and build a more complete picture of your contacts. Instead of simply working from their names and current positions, you have an email address, work history, education, number of followers, skills… Data you might need to build a sales campaign or locate your next hire.
Export LinkedIn Contacts (Free Method)
If you’re still not sold on the benefits of using LIX, or you don’t have the budget and basic data will do, LinkedIn provide a great step by step guide, here.
In a nutshell, this is how it’s done:
- Hit the button labelled ‘Me’ on the upper menu of the LinkedIn homepage
- Click on ‘Settings & Privacy’ from the menu that unfolds
- There is a tab labelled ‘Privacy’, open that tab
- Inside the area marked ‘How LinkedIn uses your data’, click on the button that says ‘Change’
- This will lead you to a ‘download your data’ page, here you must select ‘Connections’
- Check the primary email address attached to your LinkedIn, a list of your connections will be sent there
Additional LinkedIn Data Extraction
Generate Emails
This powerful feature is one our most popular, and it’s easy to see why! If the individual you’re exporting has their email address listed publicly on LinkedIn, we will export that for you as the simplest option. If, however, they have no email address listed (commonly this is case) our email generator will use a clever automated system to find it for you.
This process involves scanning the web for possible email addresses, permutations and email addresses for others within that person’s organisation. When you export is complete, the data you receive will include that person’s most likely email address and a selection of other possibilities where possible. This means we can transform LinkedIn into a huge sales, marketing, events and networking outreach platform in just a few clicks!
Profile Enrichment
Exporting all the data from a LinkedIn profile without slow, manual copying was not possible until the LIX Deep Profile feature was launched. The Profile Enrichment tool will trawl through every profile in an exported people search, and extract their:
- Name
- Description
- Location
- Industry
- Profile Link
- Headline
- Personal Website
- Shared Connections
- Education
- Experience
This is especially useful for recruiters looking to extract full CVs from a profile, but it’s also incredibly potent data for a marketer or salesperson. This deep dive into their profile gives you insight into their work background, education and possible shared connections. Data that can be used to build more complete targeted outreach campaigns, or indeed wider sales campaigns at an organisational level.
Profile Viewer
LIX’s profile viewer is primarily for use when LIX’ing search results, rather than current contacts. If you’re a regular LinkedIn user, you’ll know that when someone views your profile LinkedIn lets you know.
Using profile viewer, you can automate up to 1,000 profile views a day. Meaning 1,000 individuals you’ve chosen through LinkedIn’s filtered search will get that notification every single day.
If you’re using LIX for data extraction, don’t use up your daily threshold with profile views! However on those days in which you have no searches or contacts to export, it’s a great tool to boost your outreach, even in a small way.
A percentage of those who see you’ve viewed their profile will view yours in return (curiosity is a powerful thing!) – you can then offer to connect with them, having warmed up your introduction ever so slightly with mutual profile views.
Export LinkedIn Search Results
This article explored in-depth how to use LIX’s features to export LinkedIn contacts with the richest data possible. However, you can use these tools outside of your current network in conjunction with a LinkedIn search.
Simply perform your search, filter your results, hit the LIX extension and select your options – just as we did with your connections.
This opens up the entire LinkedIn database for extraction…. 722 million members, at your fingertips.
While you’re here, why not read our guide to LinkedIn Influencer Marketing?