Moving iPhone Exchange Contacts to Mac

I just joined Apple Support Communities (logged in for the first time to make a username etc.) for the SOLE purpose of being able to respond to this and thank W Barnes for the recommendation. Easy Backup might be the best app ever created. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But I've been trying to figure out how to get rid of the ancient ol' Exchange account for ages, but it was the only account with all my contacts on my iPhone. Yet the contacts on this account simply refused to show in my Address Book app on my Mac. Finally, after years of pulling out my hair over this silly but extremely stress-inducing problem, I've copied all 662 of my Exchange contacts over to my iCloud account within not even 15 seconds. (Also saved backups in .vcf files on my external drive while I was at it.) THANK YOU!

W Barnes wins again...I used the free app they recommended. It costs $2.00 to use the Move feature so I just emailed my Exchange contacts to myself for free (as a .vcf) and then Gmail webmail on the computer allowed me to import the .vcf file into my Gmail contacts...

I then used Gmail's "merge contacts" features to clean up duplicates...

Gmail contacts will sync to the phone through regular Gmail settings (rather than Exchange) ...I sitll prefer Gmail's "cloud" to Apple's but Gmail doesn't do groups so if you're hungry for that functionality, you can import your contacts to your iCloud account instead and go from there...

I am getting ready to leave a job after 15 years and all my contacts are thru the exchange. It sounds like when that connection is lost that I don't lose my contacts they just won't update any longer. Correct? If I were to go in and delete the account from my phone, THEN they're gone? Right? I just want to know this so I can prepare before I leave. Thanks for ANY advice. Worried....

I would try using iExplorer to extract the contacts from the iPhone.
It works on Mac or PC, and it has a free trial version that should allow you to do everything you need.

Did it using MCBackup, which sent freely, a csv of all contacts from iPhone via mail (from my mailbox). Then I just dragged that file to Contacts on my Mac.

You can also seek other free/suitable apps by searching with "contacts" as keyword.

Good luck!

You can transfer contacts from iPhone to Mac using iTunes. This allows you to keep all your iPhone contact information on Mac. To do this, you could follow the steps below to see how to transfer contacts from iphone to mac:

1. Connect your iPhone to Mac and launch iTunes on Mac.

2. When your device appears in the iTunes window (below Devices), select it.

3. Click the Info button and select "Sync Address Book Contacts".

Use your Mac Address Book and sync your iPhone with iTunes. From the Info tab, under Contacts, make sure to select “Address Book” from the drop-down menu before you sync.

I am not sure whether it works on Mac, but you can use copytrans contacts to transfer the contacts too (in case you do not want to use iTunes sync):

Finally, you can simply use the iCloud app and install it on your Mac. Make sure to enable iCloud contact sync on your iPhone. Then import contacts from your Mac to your iCloud application, this will move and sync the contact entries to your iPhone.

Hy Ropertwofeet, thank you for this hint, i bought 6 weeks ago my first i-mac and had all my phone numbers on my i-phone 6+ via exchange. I had asked a lot off Mac specialists but nobody could tell me how to do. Now I surged the internet and found your post. I downloaded and within 2 minutes all my 885 numbers with contact photo's are on my Mac for € 1,99 perfect thank you.......🙂

THANK YOU!! So excellent - I had 1500. This is a real blindspot for Apple - the fact I was living in a fools paradise running around thinking the Apple contacts were saving and keeping a holistic list. I highly recommend the app My Contacts Backup Pro thanks to RoperTwoFeet. Only problems I encountered were lots and lots of dups and a bunch of unwanted Yahoo contacts coming-in due to their new approach of adding to your contacts EVERYONE you ever email. Thus lots of contacts in there for random stuff. After this backup, I will be turning off Yahoo Contacts sync on my iphone. But beware that may delete yahoo contacts from iphone.

So, now I'm off to figure out how to MERGE duplicates. Contacts management on iCloud is VERY basic. Can't see when contacts were added or manage duplications. arrrghh. My Contacts **** somewhat continues.

Thank you, this has been really helpful. Took a few seconds to get all 1999 of my contacts over to iCloud from my soon-to-be defunct exchange account. many thanks.