How to export your data from LinkedIn

Requesting the GDPR export, what arrives, and how to open it.

easy Wait: minutes for the small files, up to twenty-four hours for the rest

LinkedIn is required to give you a copy of the data it holds about you, including posts and social activity and records. The request itself is free, and arrives as .zip containing CSV. Typical wait: minutes for the small files, up to twenty-four hours for the rest.

Get a copy of your data

Step by step

  1. Open Settings, then Data privacy

    Get a copy of your data. This is not available in the mobile app.

  2. Choose the larger option

    The quick option gives you a handful of files within minutes. The full one takes up to a day and includes connections and messages.

  3. Wait for both emails

    They arrive separately. The fast set first, the important set later.

  4. Download within seventy-two hours

    The link expires after three days, which is shorter than most services.

Opening your LinkedIn export

Muletto reads a LinkedIn export directly - the zip, without unpacking it first - and finds the posts and social activity and records inside.

It runs in the browser: the archive is never uploaded, there is no account, and nothing is installed. Open several exports at once and they become one library, with the photographs that appear in more than one of them found automatically.

What the connections file does not contain, which is most of what people expect. It holds a name, a company and a job title, and that is close to all: no profile URL, no headline, no skills, no endorsements, no work history, no education, no location. Phone numbers are never included at all, and email addresses appear only for connections who chose to allow it - commonly around half of them are blank, which is a privacy setting on their side and not a fault in your download. Pending invitations are absent too; only connections who accepted are listed.

Open your LinkedIn export

Worth knowing

What the connections file does not contain, which is most of what people expect. It holds a name, a company and a job title, and that is close to all: no profile URL, no headline, no skills, no endorsements, no work history, no education, no location. Phone numbers are never included at all, and email addresses appear only for connections who chose to allow it - commonly around half of them are blank, which is a privacy setting on their side and not a fault in your download. Pending invitations are absent too; only connections who accepted are listed.
Connections and messages, which are the two most people actually want, are in the slower batch. It is easy to download the first email and think that is everything.
Connections.csv begins with several lines of explanatory text before the header row, so importing it directly into a spreadsheet mis-labels every column.
Dates in that file use English month names regardless of your language setting.

Common questions

Why is my LinkedIn export missing my connections?

They are in the second, slower download. LinkedIn sends a small set of files within minutes and the rest, including connections and messages, up to twenty-four hours later as a separate email.

Why does Connections.csv open wrongly in Excel?

There are three or four lines of notes above the real header row. Skip down to the line beginning First Name and import from there.

How long is a LinkedIn data download available?

Seventy-two hours, which is shorter than most. After that you have to request it again.

Why are so many email addresses blank in Connections.csv?

Because each of those people turned that off, or never turned it on. LinkedIn only includes a connection's email address if they have allowed it to be visible to their connections, so a column that is half empty is the setting working rather than the export failing. Requesting again will not fill it in, and no part of the archive holds the missing ones.

Can I get phone numbers, or full profiles, out of this?

No. Phone numbers are not in the export under any setting. Neither are the things that make a connection recognisable later - headline, skills, work history, even the profile URL. If you are exporting because you want to keep your network, be aware that what you are keeping is a list of names and employers as they were on the day you asked.