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Contacts - Export formatted contact details (like PDF)

I was recently asked by a client how create a formatted PDF list of their contacts in Xero with addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses etc.

They had been asked for this by their factoring provider.

I know they can select all contacts and use the option at the top of the screen to export, but that creates a csv file which obviously doesn't have any formatting and runs the risk of it being opened in Excel which then messes up phone numbers etc (we are in the UK where phone numbers start 0 and Excel 'helpfully' removes this when opening the csv file and if you are not careful when saving the file down again you can lose it for good).

Can the export option have a choice to export to PDF, or can you add a report that lists all the contacts with all their details (similar to what shows on the contacts screen) which can then be sent to Excel / PDF / Google sheets etc in the same way as others?

Thanks

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Ross Nicol shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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submitted  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Thanks for the extra detail, Ross and apologies I never rounded back on this here. While we also don't have plans for creating a report that includes all the detail from a contacts record atm I've slightly adjusted the title of your idea here and we'll continue to track interest in this here. If any plans are made down the line I'll be sure to let you know on the idea here.

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  • Ross Nicol commented  ·   ·  Report

    Hi,

    Sorry if I've not made it clear, but I / the client are basically looking for a PDF version of what is displayed onscreen when you go into the contacts option in Xero.

    Exporting the information to csv removes all formatting and has all the information for a contact in one line which makes it hard to read.

    Also, once opened in Excel or Google sheets, because of the way uk phone numbers are formatted, usually with a leading zero, these are 'helpfully' removed as they are considered surplus, and you need to remember and format these cells to retain the leading zero before doing anything with the file.

    We are therefore looking for a multi-line per contact report, which can be exported to PDF in the same way as most of the other reports in Xero can be.

    Part of the issue is that there isn't actually a report which shows this information, so the only option is to use the export button at the top of the contacts screen which only has csv.

    So rather than adding PDF as an exportable option from there, could a new report be created instead?

    Appreciate you letting me know that you don't have plans to add PDF as an exportable option, and if the same is true of adding a new report then so be it, but at least I've asked.

    Thanks

    Ross