How to Share Multiple Contacts at Once on the Mac

When someone asks you for a single person’s contact information, that’s no problem. But when you’re asked to provide the contact information for 100 people…yikes. Thankfully, if you store you contact list in Apple’s Contacts app, sharing any number of contacts with others — such as sharing a Christmas card list — is quick and easy. Here are the steps you’ll follow to share a group of contacts on your Mac!

Step 1: Create a Contacts Group

To share multiple contacts at once, you’ll first need to create a group in the Contacts app. To do so, launch Contacts and head up to File > New Group from the menu bar at the top of the screen. If all of the contacts you want to share are already in a group, just skip on to the next step.

Your new group will appear in the Contacts app sidebar. Select it and rename it as desired.

Step 2: Add Contacts to Your Group

Once your Contacts group is created, click All Contacts in the sidebar to ensure that you can see all of your contacts in the list on the right. Next, navigate the list and drag and drop any contacts you want to share into your newly created group.

Step 3: Share Your Contacts Group

After you’ve added all of the contacts you wish to share to your new Contacts group, right-click (or Control-click) on the group and select Export Group vCard from the menu.

The familiar macOS Save Window will appear, letting you choose a name and location for your exported group. You’ll end up with a single file containing all of your exported contacts, stored in the cross-platform VCF file format.

Once exported, this VCF file can be shared with others via any standard method, such as attaching it to an email message, uploading it to your Dropbox, or simply copying it to a USB flash drive for the old “sneakernet” method.

If the recipient of your shared contacts is another Mac user, they can simply double-click on the VCF file to import the contacts into their own Contacts app. If they’re using Outlook or most third-party contact apps, they can still access and import the data, but they may need to convert the file into a compatible format first.

One final note: The Apple Contacts app allows users to store notes and photos associated with each contact. If you’d like these included in the file you share, head to Contacts > Preferences > vCard and make sure to check the corresponding options before you export your group.

But be careful if you choose to share these items, especially if you tend to make less-than-flattering notes about people! Or if you use less-than-flattering pictures for them, I guess. I know it’s pretty funny to have that one drunk photo you took of your best friend as his contact picture, but no one else should ever see that.