Contacts

Connect

Press “connect” on the Contacts card. The panel opens in your AddressBook folder, ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook: press “Select this folder”. Exporter reads only that folder, with no permission prompt, and reads your iCloud and Exchange cards from it too. Then press “select export folder”.

Where the files go

One Markdown file per card, Anna Kowalski.md. Two people with the same name each get a short id suffix, so neither file overwrites the other. A folder right in your home folder, like ~/Documents, gets a contacts-export folder inside it; a deeper one, like ~/Documents/contacts, is used as it is.

The tab the card is on is also the folder layout:

tab	files land in
All, Recent	the top of the export folder
Groups	groups/<group>/; a card in two groups is written once, under the first
Companies	companies/<company>/

Switching the tab moves the files on the next sync, and the card says so under the tabs. Recent lists the 100 most recently changed cards; the Groups and Companies trees end with “Not in a group” and “No company”.

What is exported

The cards ticked on the card, with every field they have. Left out: the email-only entries Gmail collects for every address you wrote to. There is no vCard or CSV export: for a .vcf, use File > Export > Export vCard in Contacts.

Format

Always Markdown.

The file

Each key appears only when the card has a value. List values carry their label, like +1 415 555 0123 (mobile).

key	holds
title	the name
aliases	the nickname and the maiden name
id, source_url	the card’s id, and an addressbook:// link that opens it in Contacts
created, modified	when the card was made and last changed
organization, job_title, department	the work lines
birthday	the birthday
email, phone	the first email and phone, plain, for templates
emails, phones, addresses, urls	every one, with its label
social, im	social profiles and messaging accounts
dates, relationships	other dates and related names, like father: Tom Kowalski
groups	the Contacts groups the card belongs to
conversations	links to the card’s conversations, when Messages is exported too

The body is the name, the job line and the card’s note:

---
title: "Anna Kowalski"
id: "410FE041:ABPerson"
created: 2019-04-02T10:15:33
modified: 2026-08-30T19:02:11
source_url: "addressbook://410FE041:ABPerson"
organization: "Northwind Studio"
job_title: "Art director"
birthday: 1990-12-10
email: "anna@northwind.example"
phone: "+1 415 555 0123"
phones:
  - "+1 415 555 0123 (mobile)"
groups:
  - "Studio"
---

# Anna Kowalski

Art director · Northwind Studio

Met at the print fair.

Free and unlocked

Your first 100 cards among the ones you ticked export and keep syncing free, and a deleted card gives its place back; the rest need the one-time unlock (pricing).

Sync and full resync

After the first “sync now”, an edited card rewrites its file while Exporter runs, and a deleted card’s file leaves on the next sync.

“full resync” asks first, then removes only the files Exporter wrote, writes every card again and picks the free 100 again. Anything else in the export folder stays.

Problems and fixes

• “no contacts database in that folder (pick the AddressBook folder itself)”: press “connect” again and select the folder the panel opens in
• files moved into other folders: the card went to another tab. Go back to the tab you want and press “sync now”
• a card is missing: it is past the free 100, unticked, or an email-only entry from Gmail
• a failed card: last sync shows a red “details” link with the cards that failed and an “open” link to each