Frontline provides different ways and formats for users to export contacts. Below are the different ways you can export contacts:
- If you want to export all the contacts on your workspace, navigate to the home of the People section and click on ‘Export all’ at the top of the page.
- You could also choose to export all contacts within a Group or Smart group. To do this, navigate to the Group or Smart group whose contacts you would like to export and then click on ‘Export all’ at the top of the page.
- You may want to export only certain selected contacts either in a Group, Smart group or in the All contacts list. To do this select the contacts you want to export by clicking on the small square next to each contact. Once you’ve select the contacts, click on ‘Export selected’.
- All the above options will automatically open a window with 3 format options for the export, CSV, PDF, Microsoft Excel (XLS) and Vcard. CSV is great if you are importing the Contacts into another app as almost all apps support CSV, especially spreadsheet apps like Microsoft Excel. Likewise choosing XLS format will allow you to open the exported contacts with Microsoft Excel or any other XLS supported spreadsheet applications. PDF is useful if what you want is a quick printable table. Vcard, also called VCF, is the most robust ‘contact-specific’ file format if you are planning to import into another contact database such as Outlook or Google Contacts, but beware some of your Frontline custom contact fields may not be supported.
Note: For CSV format, if your contact data contains Non-English characters especially accent characters (such as é, ç, ü, etc) ensure that you open it with a spreadsheet application other than Microsoft Excel because Microsoft excel doesn't support CSV files with such characters. However, if you really want to use Microsoft Excel then it's better to download the XLS format instead.
- Select your preferred option and click ‘Export contacts’.
- After a short time a green notification will appear at the top of your page when the export is ready to download. Click on the link provided to download the file.
- The export will be saved on your computer.
Exporting a single contact including all associated information
- From your list of contacts on the People page, click on the contact you would like to export.
- This will open the selected contact page that contains all information associated with that contact including all messages.
- Click on ‘Export this contact’.
- It will automatically open a window with 4 format options for the export, XLS, CSV, PDF and Vcard. Select your preferred option and click ‘Export contacts’.
- A green notification will appear at the top of the page when the export is ready to download. Click on the link provided to download the file.
- The export will be saved on your computer.
Note:
- When using Microsoft Excel for editing your exported contacts ensure that your computer's date format is set to dd-mm-yy instead of dd/mm/yy because Excel automatically converts the dates in the file to what the default date format is set to. If unchanged, this could result into problems should you try to reimport the exported file and the dates were changed to the incorrect format.
- For windows users, ensure that the final names of the files downloaded always end with either .csv for csv exports, .xls for MS Excel exports or .vcf for vcard exports. This is because windows imposes a character limit on the names of files. The number of characters is calculated to include the entire path name of the file on the computer. Another remedy to this is to ensure you do not store the export files in deep nested folders to ensure the resultant full path for the files does not exceed the limit. For reference the typical length an export file from Frontline is 66 characters.
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