How to export your address book to Excel

To get your address book into Excel, use CSV export in Labels by Zaweba. It writes the contacts, either all of them or just the current group, as a CSV file in UTF-8 with a byte-order mark. That small marker is what makes Excel open the file correctly, so names with accents and addresses with unusual characters come through as they should.

Once the file is open in Excel you can sort it, filter it, count it and share it like any other spreadsheet.

Why CSV rather than an Excel file

CSV is the plain, universal format for lists. Every spreadsheet reads it, every database can import it, and it will still be readable in twenty years. Excel opens a CSV directly, so you don't lose anything by going through it.

The one catch with CSV has always been the character set. A CSV saved the old way can turn é into two odd symbols when Excel opens it. Labels avoids that by writing UTF-8 with the byte-order mark, which Excel recognises.

The steps

Open Labels and go to the address book tab. Decide how much of the book you want. To export everything, leave the list showing all contacts. To export only part, filter to one group first, such as Club members or Customers.

Run the CSV export, choose where to save the file and give it a name that says what it holds, ideally with the date. Then open the file in Excel, by double-clicking it or through Excel's own Open command.

Each contact appears as a row, with the details in columns. Widen the columns and add a filter row if you want to sort by town or search for a postcode.

What people do with the spreadsheet

A club treasurer might match the members list against subscriptions. A small business might count customers by county or check for missing email addresses. A family might share the Christmas card list with a relative who does half the cards. In each case the spreadsheet is a working copy, and the address book in Labels stays the master.

If you make corrections in Excel, save the sheet as CSV again and bring it back with Labels' CSV import. Import matches header names generously and skips duplicates with the same name, company and postcode, so you won't double up contacts that are already there.

Keeping it tidy

Save a fresh export whenever you want an up-to-date copy. A CSV is a snapshot, so changes made in Labels afterwards are not in it.

When you save from Excel, choose a CSV format that keeps UTF-8 if Excel offers it. Labels' import reads UTF-8 and Windows-1252 files, separated by commas, semicolons or tabs, so it copes with what Excel normally produces.

Treat the exported file with care. It holds names, addresses, phone numbers and emails, so keep it somewhere private and delete old copies you no longer need.

Other routes in and out

Labels has no direct vCard or Outlook import or export, so CSV is the bridge in both directions. To move contacts in from Outlook, export a CSV there and import it into Labels. To move them on to another program, export from Labels and use that program's CSV import.

Labels keeps everything in a local file on your PC with no account, so this export is also your backup. A CSV copy on a USB stick or another drive means a broken computer doesn't take your address book with it.