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A clean, honest data-liberation walkthrough: what you can pull out, what you cannot, and the two gotchas that break most exports.
by Ozlem Yildirimer · Last updated: 2026-06-27To export contacts from ActiveCampaign, open Contacts, use the top-right menu to export all contacts, or open a single list and click Export after choosing a status. Pick the fields you want, then download the finished CSV from Contacts, Exports. List export links stay valid for seven days.
Your contact data belongs to you, and getting it out cleanly is the first step whether you are backing up, migrating, or just want a portable copy. The process is straightforward once you know the two things that trip people up: a naming quirk that can save your file in the wrong format, and the fact that contact notes never come along for the ride.
This guide walks through both export paths, how to pull your suppression list so you stay compliant, and how to get campaign performance data out separately. Everything below is drawn from the vendor’s official help documentation.
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Key Takeaways
You can export your contacts along with their custom fields, lead scores, and deal scores. Tags are included too, and they arrive bundled into a single column rather than one column per tag. The one hard limit worth knowing before you start: contact notes cannot be exported at all.
That notes exclusion matters if your team has been logging call summaries, support context, or sales details directly on contact records. Those live only inside ActiveCampaign, so if they are important to you, plan to copy them manually or capture them another way before you leave. Everything structured, meaning the data that sits in real fields, travels fine.
If you are exporting because the platform has started to feel heavier or pricier than you need, that is a common trigger. Many people weigh their options at this stage, and our roundup of the best ActiveCampaign alternatives lays out simpler tools so you know where a clean CSV could land next.
Read enough? Try Mailsoftly free with 500 contacts and 2,000 emails per month, no credit card.Start free with Mailsoftly →
To export every contact, go to your Contacts overview, open the menu in the top-right area of the page, choose the fields you want to include, and run the export. ActiveCampaign then builds the file in the background and makes it available for download.
Here is the sequence, step by step:
Special characters in the export name, such as an exclamation mark, a hash, or a dollar sign, can make the file save as a plain text file instead of a CSV. Keep the name to plain letters, numbers, and spaces. If your download opens as text instead of a spreadsheet, this is almost always why.
That naming quirk is the single most common reason a full-contact export looks broken. A file named something like “Q3 backup” behaves; a file named “Q3 backup!” may not. When in doubt, keep it boring. A boring, correctly formatted CSV is exactly what your next tool wants to see.
To export one list, go to Contacts, then Lists, and open the list you want. Choose a Status to filter by, click Export, and select your fields. Active is the default status, but you can also export Unconfirmed, Unsubscribed, Bounced, or Any contact in that list.
The status filter is more useful than it looks. If you only want engaged, mailable people, keep the default Active status. If you are auditing why deliverability slipped, exporting Bounced contacts gives you a focused list to clean. And if you want an exhaustive backup of everyone on that list regardless of state, choose Any.
One timing detail: list export download links are valid for seven days. The export still runs in the background and lands in Contacts, Exports, but do not let it sit. Download the file, store it somewhere safe, and treat that seven day window as a real deadline rather than a suggestion.
Export your unsubscribed contacts by opening the relevant list, setting the Status filter to Unsubscribed, and running the export. This gives you a clean record of everyone who opted out, which you must carry forward and keep honoring wherever you send next.
This is not optional housekeeping, it is a compliance obligation. When someone unsubscribes, that choice follows them across every platform you use. Importing your active contacts into a new tool without also importing your suppression list is how good senders accidentally email people who already said no, which damages both your reputation and your legal standing.
Compliance checklist before you switch:
1. Export Active contacts (the people you will mail).
2. Export Unsubscribed contacts (the people you must never mail).
3. Import both into your new tool and mark the second group as suppressed.
4. Confirm the new platform honors that suppression on every send.
A good destination tool makes suppression effortless rather than something you police by hand. If you ever feel stuck on this during a move, real human support makes a difference, which is one reason people compare notes on what ActiveCampaign customer service is actually like before deciding where to go.
Campaign report data is exported separately from your contacts. If you want to keep a record of how your emails performed, opens, clicks, and other reporting metrics, you export that from the campaign reporting area rather than from the Contacts screen.
This separation is worth planning around. Your contact export is your audience; your campaign export is your history. A lot of people grab the contacts, migrate, and only later wish they had kept a snapshot of past performance for benchmarking. If your reporting matters to you, export it while you still have access, because once you downgrade or cancel, that data can become hard to reach.
If cost is what is pushing you toward the exit rather than the product itself, it is worth checking whether a better rate is on the table first. Our overview of ActiveCampaign discounts and how to lower your bill covers the levers available before you commit to a full migration.
Once you have a clean CSV, the hard part is over. A well-formatted export imports into most modern email tools in minutes, and the right destination will map your fields, respect your suppression list, and get you sending again without a steep learning curve.
Mailsoftly is built for exactly this moment. The free plan gives you 500 contacts and 2,000 emails per month with no credit card required (pricing as of 2026-04-15), and it comes with free hands-on migration where a real person helps import your CSV correctly, notes-and-tags edge cases included. If you want a side-by-side sense of the move, our guide to switching from ActiveCampaign to Mailsoftly walks through what changes and what stays the same.
Import that CSV, hand your unsubscribes to a tool that honors them automatically, and you keep every bit of value you built without the overhead you were trying to leave behind. That is the whole point of a clean export: your data, portable, on your terms.
For the broader picture on this topic, see our complete Email Platform Comparisons guide, which covers strategy, fundamentals, and advanced playbooks.
No. Contact notes cannot be exported from ActiveCampaign. Custom fields, lead scores, deal scores, and tags all come through, but any notes logged on a contact record stay inside the platform. If those notes matter, copy them manually before you migrate.
This almost always comes from special characters in the export name. Symbols like an exclamation mark, a hash, or a dollar sign can cause the file to save as plain text rather than CSV. Rename the export using only letters, numbers, and spaces, then run it again.
List export download links are valid for seven days. The export runs in the background and appears under Contacts, Exports, but you should download and store the file promptly rather than waiting, since the link expires after that window.
Yes. Open the list, set the Status filter to Unsubscribed, then click Export. This gives you a clean suppression record. You must keep honoring those opt-outs on whatever platform you move to, so import that file alongside your active contacts.
Exports run in the background, so they are not instant. When the job finishes, download the file from Contacts, Exports. From there you have a ready-to-import CSV that you can load straight into a new email tool.
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