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How to Sync LinkedIn Contacts With Outlook? Complete Guide

author
Published By Ashwani Tiwari
Aswin Vijayan
Approved By Aswin Vijayan
Published On February 9th, 2023
Reading Time 4 Minutes Reading
Category Excel

importing linkedin contacts to outlook

If you use Microsoft Outlook 2021, 2019, 2016, 2010 or 2007 as your email client then, you can manage your LinkedIn network from Outlook itself. In this article, we will show you the simplest solution to sync LinkedIn contacts with Outlook 2016 and other versions.

LinkedIn and Outlook – A Quick Introduction

LinkedIn is the largest professional community in the whole world that has more than 150 million users from around 200 countries and territories. It’s the best professional network integrator that allows inviting others to join our professional network and explore the sectors, functional areas, etc. Whereas, Microsoft Outlook is one of the most widely used desktop-based email clients to transfer emails and manage other data items like contacts, calendars, tasks, etc.

But, do you know we can synchronize LinkedIn contacts with Outlook and connect with our LinkedIn connections on a personal level. Well, yes you can do all of this with your LinkedIn connections via exporting them into an Excel CSV file. But, now you might be thinking;

How to Sync LinkedIn Contacts With Outlook?

Since there is no direct way to import LinkedIn contacts into Outlook, so first you have to export your LinkedIn Contacts to CSV and then only you can begin the sync process. Below are the guidelines for the same:
Log in to your LinkedIn account first to initiate import LinkedIn contacts file with Outlook 2016 process

  • Now, click on My Network and click on Connections

click the my network

  • Click on Manage synced and imported contacts option from the right side of the screen

Manage synced and imported contacts

  • Select all the contacts you want to export and sync with your Outlook 2016 and click Export Contacts

click Export Contacts

  • LinkedIn will start preparing a copy of your data. From here select the Connections option from ‘Want something in particular? Select the data files you’re most interested in’ section. Click Request Archive

Request Archive

  • LinkedIn will ask you for your LinkedIn account password for confirmation. So, Enter the password and click Done to start importing LinkedIn contacts into Outlook

Enter the password

  • Wait for a few moments because your connections’ archive is being prepared and once it got ready. You will get a notification in your linked account
  • Now, download the LinkedIn Connections archive and unzip the downloaded archive. You will find all your connections are saved within a CSV file

unzip the downloaded archive

If you will import this CSV directly to your Outlook account, then this might lead you to map and data loss issues. Therefore, we suggest you convert CSV to vCard file format first and after conversion, you can import the resultant vCard to your Outlook account simply. Below is how this could be done:

Convert Excel CSV to vCard Format

  • Click on Browse and add the converted CSV into the software. The software will preview added CSV content along with all the details. Click Next

browse Excel file

  • From the next window, select Excel field and map it with the respective vCard field. Repeat this step until all your CSV contact fields are mapped with vCard

vCard contacts attributes

  • Once the mapping is done, click Next to proceed

map attributes

  • Select vCard v2.1/3.0/4.0 and Create Single vCard options. Browse a destination location for the resultant file and click Convert.

Click on the convert button

CSV contacts will start converting into vCard and once the conversion completes, navigate to the saved location and you will find converted vCard files there.

Import Converted File to Outlook Account

After this, you have to import the converted vCard into your Outlook 2016 account and follow the guidelines given below to start sync LinkedIn Contacts with the Outlook process:

  • Open the Microsoft Outlook application and click on the File menu
  • Select Open & Export and highlight Import/Export

linkedin contact sync outlook

  • Choose Import a vCard File option and click Next

Import a vCard File

  • Navigate and select the vCard file and click Open
  • Choose the Contacts option from the left navigation pane and all your

Contacts

  • vCard contacts will automatically sync with Outlook Contacts.

Are you facing an Outlook crash issue while importing contacts? Read this to fix Outlook crashes while importing contacts error

Concluding Lines

How to sync LinkedIn Contacts with Outlook 2016, 2019 is one of the major queries that several users ask today. In this article, we have disclosed a step-by-step solution to upload LinkedIn contacts with Outlook effortlessly. The solution mentioned here to import LinkedIn connections to Outlook does not require any technical assistance and all technical, as well as non-technical users, can perform it without any issue.