How to Export Your LinkedIn Connections (and What to Do With Them)

The short version: LinkedIn lets you export your first-degree connections as a CSV in about five clicks, then makes you wait for an email. Here's how, plus the honest part most guides skip: what that file can and can't do for you, and the faster way to get what you're probably after.

How to export your LinkedIn connections

1. On LinkedIn, click your photo (Me), then Settings & Privacy.
2. In the left menu, choose Data privacy.
3. Click Get a copy of your data.
4. Select "Want something in particular?" and check Connections.
5. Click Request archive. LinkedIn emails you a download link. A connections-only request usually arrives within minutes, but LinkedIn says it can take up to 24 hours.

The file is a CSV that opens in Excel or Google Sheets. (LinkedIn moves this screen around now and then; these steps are current as of late 2026.)

What's in the file

First name, last name, profile URL, company, position, and the date you connected. There's an email column, but it's mostly blank: it only fills in for connections who explicitly allowed email sharing, and few people do.

What people do with the export

1. Back it up. Accounts get restricted; the list took years to build. A yearly export is cheap insurance.
2. Match it against a CRM. See which of your accounts someone at your company already knows.
3. Clean it up. Audit who's actually in there.

All reasonable. But the export has two problems that no spreadsheet work fixes.

Problem 1: it's a stale snapshot you have to keep re-requesting

Every export is a one-time file. Request the archive, wait for the email, download, repeat next month when your network has changed. The moment you download it, it starts going stale.

Problem 2: it tells you who you know, not who they know

Your first-degree list you mostly know already. The asset is the second degree. If you have 5,000 connections and each of them has their own network, that's millions of people reachable through exactly one warm intro, and none of it is in the CSV. The value isn't a list of names. It's knowing which specific person can make which specific intro, and how strong that relationship really is.

The alternative: a network you can query instead of download

That's what Draftboard is for. It maps your network automatically. Nobody in your network has to sign up, install, or export anything, and the map stays current instead of aging in a spreadsheet.

Then you stop downloading files and start asking questions, in the app, over the API, or from an AI assistant like Claude or ChatGPT:

• "Am I connected to anyone at [company]?"
• "Who can introduce me to [person]?"
• "Which of my connections can reach my Q4 target accounts?"

Every answer comes back with the relationship behind it and a 0 to 100 strength score: "worked together at Google for two years, ending three years ago." (Assistant setup takes about two minutes: draftboard.com/mcp, or read the LinkedIn MCP overview.)

Start free with 50 credits and see who your network can actually reach.