Back Up Your Facebook Contacts to Yahoo & Gmail

Facebook makes many aspects of your life more convenient. It’s an easy way to stay in touch, it reminds you of your friends’ birthdays, and it can sync your contacts and Facebook events to your smartphone. And before you know it, you depend on Facebook. Or maybe other people depend on being friends with you on Facebook.

Part of this dependence is in Facebook stepping in to manage your contacts. Imagine you lost access to your Facebook account and thus all your friends. Would you still have a backup somewhere? And on the other hand, do you already have all of your friends on Facebook? Or would you know how to migrate your friends when moving from one Facebook account to another? Well, let me show you how you can export (back up) and import your Facebook contacts.

How To Export Facebook Contacts to Yahoo!

The easiest way I found to export Facebook contacts is via Yahoo! Mail. This requires that you add your Yahoo! email address to Facebook. Go to your General Account Settings and Edit your Email settings. Add your Yahoo! email address and verify it. Repeat this for all accounts from which you want to save contacts from, and for the account you wish to import them to.

Now go to your Yahoo! email account. Switch to the Contacts tab and click the Import Contacts button next to the Facebook logo.

Select the Facebook icon and confirm that you wish to share your contacts with Yahoo! A few seconds later you will be able to view your imported contacts on your Facebook list.

Note that this method works only for contacts who gave Facebook permission to share their email address when friends download their contact data. This option is available via General Account Settings.

How To Export Your Yahoo! Contacts

Although I’m describing this process for Yahoo!, it’s the same for any of your other email accounts, at least in principle. While viewing your Yahoo! contacts, click Actions and selectExport All…

Click the Export Now button next to the option Yahoo! CSV.

You will need to verify that you are not a robot by entering a CAPTCHA. And then it takes another couple of seconds until your download will start.

How To Import Facebook Contacts Into Gmail

As you might have figured out already, it’s not possible to import Facebook contacts directly into Gmail. However, you can import a CSV file. So what you need to do is export your Facebook contacts to a third party service like Yahoo! Mail, then save a CSV file from that account, and import it into Gmail.

To import a CSV file, go to your Gmail account, click the arrowhead next to where it saysGmail in the top left and select Contacts. On top of your contacts, expand the More button and select Import…

Then choose a CSV file on your computer, for example the previously saved Yahoo! CSV file, and click Import.

How To Import Contacts Into Facebook

At the Find Friends page you can either import all of your Yahoo!, Skype, ICQ, and contacts from many other services, or upload a CSV file, such as the one you saved from Yahoo! before. I will continue with the Yahoo! example.

To import your Yahoo! contacts, make sure your Yahoo! email address was added and confirmed under your Facebook account and select Yahoo! Your email address should be filled in already. Click the Find Friends button.

A window will pop up asking you to authorize access to your Yahoo! Contacts and profiles. Click Agree to proceed.

In the next step, you will be able to select contacts not yet friends with you, but who do have a Facebook account. In the third step you can invite contacts to Facebook who don’t seem to have an account, at least not with the address in your contact list.

How To Import A CSV File Into Facebook

To import contacts via a CSV file, scroll further down the list and click Find Friends next to theOther Tools option.

When you select Upload Contact File several options will expand. Click the Choose File button and browse to the CSV file you want to import, for example the Yahoo! CSV if you saved it as described above. Click the Upload Contacts button and follow the Find Friendsand Invite Friends procedure described above.

Conclusion

Exporting contacts from Facebook into other accounts is straight forward, although it might involve a small workaround, for example via Yahoo! Mail if you want to export to Gmail. Importing contacts into Facebook is even more convenient, as Facebook provides many ways to find your friends and invite them to join you on your favorite social network.

What other ways to import or export data from Facebook are you using or missing?

Original Article at Makesuseof.com