Recently Facebook and Yahoo formed a partnership of sorts and with it came an exciting new feature – the ability to download your friends email addresses.  If you don’t have a Yahoo Mail account, you can sign up here.

This is great for businesses owners because it means we can get our connections off Facebook and into our Address Books allowing us to protect our network in the unlikely event that our Facebook account is banned for some reason, or Facebook stops becoming the social network of choice.

Now remember, with great power comes great responsibility – so don’t add these people to your mailing list without getting their permission first.

Import Your Contacts From Facebook

1. Go to address.yahoo.com and log in to your Yahoo account.
2. Select “Import Now”.



3. Select the Facebook icon.  If you aren’t already signed into Facebook, you may be prompted to log in.



4. Allow the Yahoo Contact Importer to access your Facebook Account.



5. Once the download has completed, return to the Contacts home page by selecting the contacts Menu.
6. Select the Fix Duplicates entries option.



7. In the Clean Up Duplicates, select Merge All Exact to remove Exact Matches.



8. Examine any left over similar matches and decide whether to merge them or skip them.

Export your Contacts from Yahoo Mail

Assuming you don’t use Yahoo Mail as your primary mail client, you’ll want to export your contacts so you can import them into your primary address book.

1. From the Tools menu, select Tools -> Export.



2. Select Export Yahoo! CSV and Export Now.

Mac Users: The file will be saved into your Downloads folder.  The file should be called something similar to: yahoo_xx.csv (it depends on the first 2 letters of the last name of your first contact – in my case the last name is Abel, so my file is yahoo_ab.csv).
PC Users: You will be prompted to save your file to you local machine.

Import Your Contacts into Your Address Book

Mac Users: Import Your Contacts into Your Apple Address Book

1. In your Address Book select the File Menu -> Import.
2. Select the yahoo_xx.csv file from your Downloads folder to import the contacts.  Press OK to import.
3. Once the import has completed, remove duplicate entries by using the Card Menu -> Look for duplicates.

PC Users: Import Your Contacts Into Outlook

1. In Outlook select File Menu Import and Export.
2. Make sure Import from another program or file is highlighted. Click Next.
3. Now make sure Comma Separated Values (Windows) is selected. Click Next.
4. Use the Browse button the select the file you downloaded from Outlook.
5. Select Do not import duplicate items. Click Next.
6. Select the Outlook folder you want to import the contacts to. This will usually be your Contacts folder. Click Next.
7. Click Map Custom Fields. Make sure all columns from the CSV file are mapped to the desired Outlook address book fields. You can create new mappings by dragging the column title to the desired field. Any previous mapping of the same column will be replaced with the new. Click OK.
8. Click Finish.