Export the contacts from an .olm archive
The address book is usually the part of an Outlook archive people actually miss: the mail is searchable elsewhere, but a phone number from 2019 is gone unless the contacts come out. An .olm holds them, and vCard is the format every address book on every platform reads.
The file you get
One .vcf file containing every contact in the archive, written as vCard 3.0, the version Apple Contacts, Google Contacts and Android accept without complaint. Open it with a double-click on a Mac, or upload it to Google Contacts.
Steps
- Get the .olm out of Outlook for Mac first: Tools tab → Export, tick what you want, Continue, save the file. If Export is greyed out you are in the new Outlook; switch the New Outlook toggle off, top right, and it comes back. Tick Contacts in the export dialog; that is what puts them in the archive.
- Drop the
.olmon this page. It is read by JavaScript in your browser tab; the file never leaves your machine. - Choose Contacts and download the
.vcf. - On a Mac: open Contacts, File → Import, pick the file, click Add. Double-clicking the file works too.
- In Google Contacts: Import → Select file, choose the
.vcf. The contacts then sync to your Android phone.
What carries over
- Display name, first and last name
- Every email address on the contact, labelled home or work as the archive had it
- Phone numbers with their labels
- Company and job title
- Postal addresses
- Notes stored on the contact
Good to know
- Microsoft has never published the
.olmformat. Mail, attachments, contacts and calendar entries are read from the XML Outlook writes; unusual items (notes, tasks, journal entries) are skipped in this version. Contact fields in particular vary between Outlook versions; anything Outlook wrote into the archive comes across, and anything it did not is absent. - Contact photos are not exported in this version.
- Importing a
.vcfadds contacts; it never replaces your address book. Duplicates are possible if you import twice, and both Apple Contacts (Card → Look for Duplicates) and Google Contacts can merge them afterwards. - Distribution lists and Outlook contact groups are not vCard concepts and do not survive.
- An archive exported without ticking Contacts contains no contacts at all. Re-export from Outlook if the count comes out as zero.
Questions
Which vCard version is it?
3.0. It is the version with the widest acceptance across Apple Contacts, Google Contacts, Android and Outlook itself. Some tools prefer 4.0; nothing in common use requires it.
Can I import these into Outlook for Windows?
Yes, but classic Outlook imports vCards one at a time. For a whole address book, import the .vcf into Google Contacts or Apple Contacts, export a CSV from there, and use Outlook's Import/Export wizard with that CSV.
Why is my contact count lower than I expected?
Two common reasons: the archive was exported without Contacts ticked, or the contacts live in the online account rather than in "On My Computer", in which case they are in the server address book and not in the archive at all.
Can I get the addresses of everyone I emailed, rather than saved contacts?
That is the CSV export: pivot on the sender and recipient columns. This page exports the saved address book only.