How to Export LinkedIn Contacts and Messages to Excel or CRM

Whether you're a recruiter, seller, founder, consultant, or just someone who feels the need to get a copy of your LinkedIn data, you're in the right place. Fortunately, this little-known LinkedIn "secret setting" comes right out of the box and requires no third-party tools or scrapers to make it work!

Step 1: Log into LinkedIn

1. Open LinkedIn in your web browser (this doesn't work on the mobile app!)
2. Sign in with your username and password.

Step 2: Go to Settings > Data Privacy

1. Click on your profile picture in the top right corner.
2. Select “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown menu.

Step 3: Request Your Data Archive

1. In the left-hand menu, click “Data privacy”.
2. Scroll down and find “Get a copy of your data”.
3. Click “Download your data”.

Step 4: Choose What to Download

1. You will see two options:
   • Larger Data Archive (everything, including connections, messages, activity, etc.).
   • Choose Something In Particular (only specific data types).
2. To download only your messages, select “Messages” from the list.
   1. In the screenshot above, we're requesting both Connections and Messages
3. Click “Request archive”.
4. Remember, it won't be ready right away!

Step 5: Verify Your Identity

1. LinkedIn may prompt you to enter your password for security verification.
2. Enter your password and confirm.

Step 6: Wait for the Email Notification

1. LinkedIn will process your request, which can take a few minutes to several hours. The length of time depends on how much data is in your account, and how busy LinkedIn's servers are.
2. You’ll receive an email with a download link once your archive is ready.

Step 7: Download Your Data

1. Click the download link in the email or return to Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Download your data.
2. Download the ZIP file containing your data.
3. If the "Request Archive" button is greyed out and you want a new one, click "Request a new archive" to open it back up

Here's what it looks like:

Step 8: Extract and View Your Messages

1. Extract the ZIP file on your computer.
2. Open the CSV or JSON file containing your message history.
3. You can open this in Excel, Google Sheets, or if you're a total nerd, with Python or R or something else. (Just kidding!)

Looking for the email addresses? Unfortunately, you won't get many of them.

Here's what LinkedIn says at the top of each CSV:

When exporting your connection data, you may notice that some of the email addresses are missing. You will only see email addresses for connections who have allowed their connections to see or download their email address using this setting https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/privacy/email. You can learn more here https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/261

But, you can still import this CSV into your CRM, even without emails!

How to Sync LinkedIn Contacts and Messages to Hubspot or Salesforce CRM

At Aware, we also believe that you should own your own LinkedIn data! To make your life easier and reduce the amount of clicking, scrolling, and CSV exporting you might otherwise have to do, we built a connector for you.

Here's how to do that.

Step 1: Log into Aware

• Log in to Aware here.
• If you don't already have an account, you'll need one
• Make sure to pick the Professional plan, at least

Step 2: Connect Your LinkedIn Account

• Navigate to the CRM section.
• Select Salesforce or Hubspot and follow the on-screen instructions to authorize Aware to access your LinkedIn data.
• Select what types of activities you want to map to CRM

Step 3: Select Data to Sync

• Choose whether you want to sync:
  • Contacts (Connections)
  • Messages (conversations in your inbox)
• This doesn't include email addresses! If you need email addresses too, you can enrich your CRM later with something like Apollo.

Step 4: Map Data Fields

• If prompted, match LinkedIn fields (e.g., Name, Company, Title, LinkedIn Profile URL) to the fields in your CRM..

Step 5: Start the Import

• Click Save and wait for the next sync to occur (generally every 2 hours).
• Aware will pull your LinkedIn contacts and messages directly into the CRM.
• These will show up as Completed Tasks.

Need any help setting this up, for example for your whole organization? Just use the in-app chat to contact us during your free trial, or go here to contact us!

Aware LinkedIn CRM Integrations

By the way, here are the links to our integrations pages, if you want to read more:

1. LinkedIn to Hubspot Integration

2. LinkedIn to Salesforce Integration

Alright...

Let's get nerdy for a second.

Here are some other things to think about when exporting your data from LinkedIn and using it elsewhere, such as in your CRM.

Some GTM Workflows You Can Use

While you could just spam the heck out of all of these valuable people you've just imported, we have better ideas!

1. Run a Hubspot report of Completed Tasks where the Subject = "Connected" or "Sent a message to", indicating a LinkedIn activity synced by Aware
2. You can also try "left a comment on" as the Subject of the Task in your filter!
3. Add a filter for "Contacts that belong to your target account segment" or that you've flagged as a high value prospect
4. Check this report daily or just set up notifications for it

You could, with this workflow, have your CEO connect their LinkedIn profile, and then track all prospects who message or comment on her posts, easily in your CRM for your sales team to reach out.

Or, if you're a smaller company or a consultant, you could just enrich your CRM with this data and run a report once a month of people who you haven't engaged with in a while, and add those people to a Custom Engagement Feed in Aware.

The possibilities are endless!

How To Maximize Data Quality

Some people like to first start by syncing Apollo to their CRM and then exporting a list of all of their high value prospects. Then, they export their LinkedIn data from CRM, manually, to populate all of the historical data. Finally, they turn on the Aware CRM integration to get their data flowing in moving on a go-forward basis. This combination can maximize the amount of email address coverage you get, combined with a consistent and lower-effort way of keeping connections and messages up to date.

If you need help setting up a data quality waterfall for your CRM, get in touch and we can recommend a consultant!