How to Backup Contacts in Outlook 365 (3 Ways Included)

Why backup Office 365 contacts?

It’s always a good practice to backup your Outlook data regularly, especially your contacts. If your computer crashes, you can pay to get your computer fixed, but you can’t pay to get all your lost contact information back.

If you backup your contacts, you’ll have a copy of all your contacts and their information. When something bad happens to your computer, you can easily load them back into Outlook. Then how to backup contacts in Outlook 365? Three ways will be described below:

👉 Way 1: Backup contacts in Outlook 365 via Outlook for Windows
👉 Way 2: Outlook 365 backup contacts using Outlook Web App (OWA)
👉 Way 3: Backup Office 365 contacts with reliable third-party software🔥

Way 1: Backup contacts in Outlook 365 via Outlook for Windows

The “Import/Export” feature in Outlook desktop app can help to copy your contacts to a PST file or a CSV file. If you want to import back into Outlook later, you may choose PST. If you want to import contacts into another email client or even another program like Excel or Word, you should choose CSV.

▶ Export Outlook contacts to a PST file

1. In Outlook, click File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
2. Click Export to a file, and then click Next.

3. Click Outlook Data File (.pst), and click Next.

4. In the Select folder to export from box, scroll to the top if needed and select the Contacts folder that's under your Microsoft 365 account. Choose Next.

5. Choose a location and name for your backup file, and then click Finish. You can keep the default location and name the backup file “contacts backup” and the like.

▶ Export Outlook contacts to a CSV file

1. In Outlook, click File > Open & Export > Import/Export.
2. Click Export to a file, and then click Next.
3. Select Comma Separate Values and click Next.

4. Select the Contacts folder under the target account and click Next.
5. Choose Browse, name your file, and click OK.

6. Confirm where your new contacts file will be saved on your computer, and click Next.
7. Click Finish to start exporting your contacts immediately. 

✍ Notes:

• After the export process is complete, you can locate the new CSV file on your computer and open it with Excel to verify your contacts are there. It’s normal if you have a lot of empty cells.
• It is recommended that you close the CSV file without saving any changes; otherwise the file might get messed up and you won't be able to use it for importing.

Way 2: Outlook 365 backup contacts using Outlook Web App (OWA)

1. After logging in to Outlook 365 website, click the People icon on the left side panel.

2. On the toolbar, select Manage contacts > Export contacts.

3. Select All contacts or select a folder of specific contacts and click Export.

4. Your contacts will be exported to a CSV file. After the CSV file is downloaded, open it in the local folder with Excel to verify your contacts are there.

Way 3: Backup Office 365 contacts with reliable third-party software

To backup Outlook data, you can also turn to reliable third-party software AOMEI Backupper Professional. It offers you full Outlook backup solutions:

• It enables you to backup all data in Outlook, including emails, contacts, notes, calendars, and tasks.
• Various backup devices are supported. For example, you can backup Outlook emails to external hard drive, local disk, USB flash drive, and NAS device, etc.
• You are allowed to backup your email data automatically using the “Schedule Backup” feature.
• You are able to run incremental or differential backup to reduce backup time and the backup image size.

After add your Microsoft 365 email account to Outlook, you can follow these steps to backup Office 365 contacts with AOMEI Backupper.

1. Download and install AOMEI Backupper on your PC. Launch the program, click Backup and select Outlook Backup.

2. Name this backup task as per your need. Then click Add Outlook Data. In the popup window, select the Contacts folder under your Microsoft 365 email account as the backup source.

3. Select a destination path to save the backup image.

4. Customize your backup task with Options, Schedule Backup and Backup Scheme as necessary. Finally, click Start Backup to begin backing up your contacts.

Summary

There are three tools offered in this article to help you backup contacts in Outlook 365 - Outlook desktop app, Outlook web app and reliable third-party software. You can choose one that best fits your need. Actually, AOMEI Backupper is far more than Outlook backup software. It is also powerful disk cloning software which enables you to transfer data from old hard drive to new drive when performing Lenovo all in one PC hard drive replacement. Try it out now!