With Google calling out Facebook last week for
trapping your contacts, it seems like a perfect time to offer a solution for rescuing those Facebook contacts and their email addresses -- sorry, still no phone numbers -- and exporting them to Gmail or your other address book of choice.
To do this, you'll need a Yahoo! account (
Mozilla's Asa Dotzler says a Windows Live account works, too). It's free, so you can sign up for a throwaway if you don't already have one. Once you've done that, take a look at our step-by-step instructions for exporting your friends' contact info, after the jump.
Step 1: Go to Yahoo!'s 'Import Contacts' Landing Page
From this page, you can click on the Facebook icon to import your Facebook friends into your Yahoo! account. A fresh Yahoo! account might actually be better for this purpose, so you don't get stuck with any duplicate contacts.
Step 2: Authenticate with Facebook
You'll want to be logged into Facebook for this step. According to the folks at Geekosystem, some people have reported trouble unless you're also logged into Facebook chat, so make sure you've got chat active, too. (You can turn it off again after the export.)
Once you hit okay, Yahoo! will automatically start rescuing your contacts.
Step 3: View Imported Contacts
This one's pretty self-explanatory, but once your contacts have been imported, you'll want to ignore that big 'done' button and click 'view imported contacts.'
Step 4: Export Contacts to the Format of Your Choice
Now, you'll want to find the 'tools' menu on the blue toolbar at the top of the Yahoo! contacts page and select 'export.' That will take you to a screen where you can pick the format to export to. You've got Outlook, Thunderbird, another Yahoo! account, a single vCard file, and a Zip with individual vCards for each contact.
Assuming you're importing into Gmail, the Outlook and Yahoo! CSV options will both work, so take your pick. For Apple's Address Book, go with the individual vCards.
Step 5: Importing into Gmail
Now, log into your Gmail account and click 'Contacts' in the sidebar. On the contacts screen, find the 'More actions' menu and pick 'Import' from it. You'll be prompted to browse for a contacts file, so go find the one you just saved from Yahoo!. If you wish, you can add all of the imported contacts to a new group as well.
And there you have it! Your contacts are now out of Facebook and into the address book or email client of your choice. It would be nice if Facebook finally allowed you to export phone numbers, of course, but at least you've freed part of your data!
