Exporting lists to Excel or CSV from LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator lets you search, not export. With Emelia's Chrome extension, a search becomes a lead list in a few clicks, then a CSV or Excel file if you need one.
| Profiles per 24 hours and per LinkedIn account | 2,500 (LinkedIn's limit) |
| Per search, Start plan | the first 2,500 results |
| Per search, Grow and Scale plans | up to 80,000, split automatically |
| Company search | 1,000 results |
| Cost | no credits with a plan; 0.5 credit per contact without one |
| Emails collected | none: LinkedIn does not show them |
| Browser | Google Chrome, with the SN Assistant extension |
Why there is no "export" button
It is the first thing that surprises you when you pay for Sales Navigator: the best B2B search engine on the market, and no way at all to get the results out of it. This is not an oversight. The data is the value of the product, and LinkedIn has no interest in letting you copy it.
Hence the detour through a browser extension. Emelia's adds an Export with Emelia button at the top of your search results; Emelia then works through the result pages in the cloud and stores the profiles in a lead list.
Emelia also extracts the classic LinkedIn search, with the LinkedIn account you connected, up to 1,000 profiles per search. And if your target is in France, Basile spares you the extraction altogether.
Before you start
- An active Sales Navigator subscription, yours or a colleague's: the extraction uses the account open in your browser at the moment you click. During the Sales Navigator free trial, volumes are much lower (in the range of 500 to 1,000 profiles).
- Google Chrome, with the SN Assistant extension: that is its name on the Chrome Web Store.
- An active Emelia plan: extraction is then free, with no cap on volume. Without a plan, it costs 0.5 credit per contact. During the Emelia free trial, one extraction is included, up to 2,500 contacts.
Step 1: open the Sales Navigator import
In the left menu, open Lead Lists, click New List at the top right, then the Sales Navigator tile.
Step 2: install the Chrome extension
The Import from Sales Navigator window checks whether the extension is installed. If it is not, step 1 shows Not detected: click Install the extension, add it from the Chrome Web Store, then come back to Emelia.
Detection happens when the page loads. If the extension stays Not detected right after you installed it, click Already installed? Check again: Emelia reloads the page and reopens the window. Once the extension is recognized, the message Emelia extension installed and active replaces step 1.
You can also find the extension directly on the Chrome Web Store. If installing from the store causes trouble, there is a manual installation procedure (in French).
Step 3: start the export from your search
Open Sales Navigator (the Open Sales Navigator button in the window takes you there), run your people or company search, and stay on the first page of results. The Export with Emelia ▾ button appears at the top of the list. If Sales Navigator was already open, reload the page to make it appear.
Click it: a small menu opens. Choose Export to Emelia V3. Emelia opens in a new tab, with your search already filled in.
Start the export from a search page. A saved lead list or a saved search is capped at 2,500 profiles, and a list can come out with empty columns. From a list, first click View in search, then the button.
Step 4: name and start the extraction
In the New Sales Navigator scrap window, your search URL is already filled in. Give the extraction a Name: it will become the name of the list, and two extractions cannot share the same name. Then click Start scrap.
Along the way, Emelia picks up your Sales Navigator session through the extension ("Syncing your LinkedIn cookie through the extension…"). If it fails, open LinkedIn in a tab, check that you are logged in, then click Retry.
Planify lets you start the extraction later, at least one hour ahead. If an extraction is already running, it is the only button offered: one extraction runs at a time.
Step 5: follow the extraction
The extraction shows up right away in Lead Lists, with a status badge: Initializing at first, then Scraping… 42% and a profile counter. It runs in the cloud: you can close the tab, and even shut down your computer. When it finishes, the list takes its place among the others, with Sales Navigator as its source.
Clicking the Sales Navigator badge of a list reopens the original search in LinkedIn: handy to find the filters you used.
This is not a quota being hit. The usual causes are an expired LinkedIn session, two extractions too close together on the same account, or a passing incident. Delete the extraction, log back into LinkedIn in Chrome, and start again from the Export with Emelia button. If nothing moves, write to support with the name of the extraction.
Step 6: get the file as CSV or Excel
The list lives in Emelia and plugs straight into a campaign, with no file in between. If you still want the file, tick the list in Lead Lists and click Export, or, from the open list, Export then CSV Export. Emelia then lets you pick the format: CSV, which works with every spreadsheet app, or Excel, which keeps columns and types.
If you open a CSV in Excel, choose UTF-8 encoding when you open it, otherwise accented first names come out as gibberish and you drag the problem all the way into your emails.
The 2,500 cap, and how to get past it
A Sales Navigator search only shows 100 pages of 25 results, so 2,500 profiles, and LinkedIn also caps extraction at 2,500 profiles per 24 hours and per account. No tool can ignore these caps, whatever it promises.
The only method is to split the search into segments of fewer than 2,500 results. On the Grow and Scale plans, Emelia does it for you as soon as a filtered search goes above 3,000 results: it creates the segments, then schedules them day after day, up to 80,000 profiles. Above 80,000, the extraction stops with an error: narrow the search first.
| Plan | Search with more than 2,500 results |
|---|---|
| Start | Only the first 2,500 results come out. Split the search yourself (by area, headcount or industry) and run the pieces one by one. |
| Grow and Scale | Automatic splitting from 3,000 results with filters, up to 80,000 profiles, at a pace of 2,500 per day and per account. |
A split extraction can be paused, resumed, or cut in two with Split: the profiles already extracted become a list right away, and the extraction carries on with the rest. Handy to start working without waiting for the end. With several Sales Navigator accounts, the limit is counted per account, and a Sales Navigator Advanced account can go up to 5,000 profiles a day on a split extraction.
30,000 profiles means at least twelve days of extraction on a single account. Plan for it, and use that time to warm up your sending mailboxes.
Building a good search
The quality of your list is decided inside Sales Navigator: a broad search brings back volume and a lot of off-target people, a tighter search brings back fewer people but people who are actually relevant to you.
Three habits that change everything. Filter on the current job title, in quotes, rather than on keywords, which dig through the whole profile and bring back anyone. To target owners of very small businesses, filter on company headcount (self-employed and 1 to 10 employees) rather than seniority: a carpenter describes himself as "Carpenter", not "CEO". And use the exclusion filters, which do more for the cleanliness of a list than any positive filter.
For a LinkedIn campaign, the recent activity filter, which isolates profiles that posted in the last 30 days, gives you people who come back to LinkedIn often, so they will see your invitation.
On the same target, a keyword search returned more than 1,500 profiles, and the same search by current job title returned 685. The difference was off-target people you would have paid for in the email search.
What the list contains, and what it never will
For each profile: first name, last name, job title, location, LinkedIn profile link and summary; for the company: name, website, size, industry, description and LinkedIn page. A column also flags Open Profiles, which you can send an InMail to without using a credit.
What it will never contain: email addresses. LinkedIn does not show them, so no extension can read them, and you should be wary of any tool that claims otherwise. The company website, on the other hand, is collected, and it is exactly the piece of data the email search needs. Expect about one address found in two on average, 30 to 70% depending on the sector.
The extraction keeps every profile, with or without an address. If your campaign starts with an email, the ones without an address are dropped from it, and do not come back if you find their address later. Run the email search before launching the campaign, or start the sequence with LinkedIn.
Is Sales Navigator really worth paying for?
The question deserves to be asked before you subscribe. Sales Navigator is still the best targeting on the market and the freshest data, since it is the people themselves who keep it up to date. For an international target, there is no real equivalent.
For a French target, on the other hand, a database that cross-references company registries, Google Maps and LinkedIn will give you more, with no daily cap. And to get started on a zero budget, the classic LinkedIn search can be extracted too, up to 1,000 profiles per search.
On video
If you would rather watch the steps than read them: exporting your Sales Navigator lists to CSV, the procedure on screen.
Frequently asked questions
The questions we get asked on this topic, answered briefly.
The "Export with Emelia" button does not show up in Sales Navigator
Reload the Sales Navigator page: the extension only adds the button when the page loads. Then check that you are on a search results page, not on the home page or a saved list. If the button is still missing, remove any older copy of the extension installed twice, and check that the extension is allowed to run on linkedin.com.
The message "Please start a search so we can process it" appears
You clicked the button from a page that is not a search. Run a search, or open a saved search, then click Export with Emelia again.
Can I extract with a colleague's Sales Navigator account?
Yes. The extraction uses the Sales Navigator account open in the browser at the moment you click, not an Emelia setting. Log into their account in Chrome and start the export: their 2,500 profiles a day limit is the one that counts.
Do I have to leave my computer on during the extraction?
No. Once started, the extraction runs in Emelia's cloud. You can close the tab or shut down your computer: the list will be ready in Lead Lists.
Does extraction use credits?
Not with an active Emelia plan: it is free, with no cap on volume. Without a plan, it costs 0.5 credit per extracted contact. It is the next steps that use credits: 1 credit per email found, 50 per phone number found.
Why does my list have fewer profiles than the search?
A few possible reasons: the search has more than 2,500 results on the Start plan; the export started from a saved list or saved search, both capped at 2,500; or it was a Sales Navigator free trial, limited to a few hundred profiles. A company search stops at 1,000 results.
How do I chain several searches?
One extraction runs at a time. For the next one, use Planify: with the same LinkedIn account, leave 24 hours between them plus an hour of margin, so the daily quota frees up. Two extractions too close together on the same account block each other.
Does extraction put my LinkedIn account at risk?
Within LinkedIn's limits, the risk is low, and LinkedIn always warns before penalizing an account. One piece of advice all the same: do not run a large extraction in the middle of the day with the account that also runs your LinkedIn campaigns; schedule it outside sending hours instead.