Exporting LinkedIn Connections: Definition & Guide
Your first-degree LinkedIn connections are the only LinkedIn data you genuinely own. Everything else, followers, search results, profile views, belongs to LinkedIn. The export CSV is your escape hatch: a portable record of every professional relationship you have built on the platform.
Here is exactly what it contains, how to pull it, and what you can actually do with it without tripping over GDPR or LinkedIn's rules.
What Exporting LinkedIn Connections Means
Exporting LinkedIn connections is the process of requesting a machine-readable copy of your first-degree network from LinkedIn's built-in data privacy tools. The output is a CSV file with one row per connection. LinkedIn has offered this since GDPR came into force in 2018, partly because the regulation requires platforms to let users access their own data.
The keyword here is "your own." The export covers only people you are directly connected to, not followers, not second-degree contacts, not people who have viewed your profile. It is narrow by design.
How to Export Your Connections (Step by Step)
The process takes about three minutes of actual effort:
- Go to linkedin.com/mypreferences/d/categories/data (or navigate: Me > Settings > Data Privacy > Get a copy of your data).
- Select "Connections" from the data options. You can request just this file rather than your entire LinkedIn archive.
- Click "Request archive."
- LinkedIn will email a download link to your registered address, usually within 10-20 minutes, sometimes longer.
- Download the ZIP and open the Connections.csv file inside.
No third-party tool required. The file opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or any CSV editor.
What the CSV Actually Contains
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| First Name | Always present |
| Last Name | Always present |
| Email Address | Blank unless the contact shared it in their settings |
| Company | Current employer at time of export |
| Position | Current job title at time of export |
| Connected On | Date you connected, in YYYY-MM-DD format |
A few things worth knowing from running this ourselves: email coverage is lower than most people expect. On a typical 500-connection export, the majority of contacts will have a blank email field. Most people leave that setting private. Company and title also reflect the current moment, not when you connected, so a contact who was "VP Sales" in 2022 might now show "Founder" if they have updated their profile.
Profile URLs are notably absent from the native export. If you need those, you either add them manually or use a compliant enrichment tool. That gap is bigger than it sounds if you are trying to feed contacts directly into a LinkedIn outreach sequence.
GDPR-Safe Uses of the Export
GDPR applies to EU residents' data regardless of where you are based, so this matters even if you are a US or Indian founder. The safe uses are narrower than most people assume.
Clearly fine:
- Storing the CSV in your own CRM for your own sales or partnership outreach.
- Enriching existing CRM records where you already have a lawful basis to contact that person.
- Identifying warm contacts before running a campaign, reviewing it manually or with a tool that does not re-scrape LinkedIn.
Grey or risky:
- Sharing the CSV with a third party, a data broker, or a co-seller who has no existing relationship with those contacts.
- Running cold email campaigns to the email addresses without a legitimate interest assessment, especially for EU contacts.
- Uploading the list to an advertising platform as a custom audience without proper consent documentation.
Use the export to organise your own outreach, not to build someone else's list. If in doubt, your legal counsel matters more than any blog post, including this one.
Re-Importing Into Outreach and CRM Tools
Most CRMs accept a raw CSV upload. The friction is in column mapping: LinkedIn calls the field "First Name" while Salesforce wants "Contact: First Name" and HubSpot sometimes chokes on the date format. Plan for 15-20 minutes of field-mapping the first time you do it.
For cloud-based LinkedIn automation tools specifically, a CSV import is often less useful than a direct LinkedIn search import. The CSV gives you a static snapshot. By the time you are running a sequence, some contacts will have changed jobs, gone inactive, or already be mid-conversation with you. A live import from LinkedIn search or Sales Navigator pulls current data.
That said, the CSV has one real advantage: it captures people your LinkedIn search might not surface due to result limits or filter gaps. We use it ourselves as a reconciliation check, comparing the export against active sequences to spot connections we have never messaged. It surfaces people who fell through the cracks.
When you import into a sequencing tool, map "Connected On" as a custom field. Knowing that someone connected three years ago versus three weeks ago changes how you write the first line. A long-dormant connection needs a warmer, more contextual opener than a recent one. This is the kind of detail that follow-up sequences actually depend on.
What the Export Does Not Replace
The CSV is a static file. It does not update when a contact changes jobs, does not capture new connections made after export, and does not tell you whether a connection has already replied to one of your messages.
For active outreach, you still need a tool that reads live LinkedIn state: who has replied, who is mid-sequence, who accepted a connection request in the last 48 hours. That is the layer where auto-pause on reply and a unified smart inbox actually matter, because the CSV alone cannot prevent you from messaging someone who already answered you last Tuesday. Sending into an active conversation is one of the more embarrassing mistakes we keep seeing on imported lists.
The export is the starting roster, not the campaign engine.
How Ampliflow Handles List Imports
Ampliflow supports LinkedIn search imports and Sales Navigator imports natively. You can also upload a CSV, including your connections export, and map it into a workflow directly. The visual drag-and-drop workflow builder lets you add If/Else branches based on fields in the CSV: route contacts with a blank email to a LinkedIn-only sequence, for example, while routing contacts with a verified email to a combined touchpoint sequence.
Because Ampliflow runs on the Unipile API rather than a browser extension, sequences keep executing even after you close your laptop. The real-time account safety scoring watches for anomalies in send patterns and pauses automatically if something looks off. That matters when you are importing a large list: blasting 500 messages in a day off a fresh export is exactly the kind of spike that gets accounts restricted. In our own testing, the accounts that stay clean are the ones with randomised timing between actions and daily volumes that stay well inside LinkedIn's stated limits. Not exciting advice, but it is the honest one.
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