copying iphone contacts to imac

I have to give up my work iPhone. I have never had a personal cellphone and am not sure I want one. I would like to copy my contacts off of my iPhone onto my iMac so that I don't lose them when I give back the phone. I connected the iPhone to my iMac with the USB cord and was able to get all of the photos off of the phone onto the iMac. However, when I go to finder, the phone does not show up as a device. How do I go about copying my contacts off of my iPhone?
Thanks
Dan

OK, I looked through this forum and found out that I have to go through iTunes to access my iPhone on my iMac. I opened iTunes and plugged in the iPhone. The iPhone shows up but the only files it gives me access to are: music, movies, TV shows, books and audiobooks. I have none of these on my phone. I cannot figure out how to view or copy my contacts. I backed up the iPhone on the iMac and also synced the contacts. However, I cannot find any of that on my iMac?
Thanks
Dan

Try following these directions. You can stop after step 3. After that disconnect the phone and launch the Contacts program on your Mac to see if the transfer worked. If this does not work post back and let us know. Please uncle what version of OS X you are using and what version of iTunes you're using.

Did not seem to work. My OS X is El Capitan 10.11.5. the iTunes version on my iMac is 12,4.0.119, which I know is not the latest version. However, due to a mixup with Apple id's (which I asked about in another thread) Apple will not let me update iTunes on my iMac. I didn't really care until now as I thought I would never need iTunes. I have no idea what version of iTunes is on my iPhone or even how to go about checking.
Thanks
Dan

Not sure if this means anything, but, when I launch the Messages program on my iMac, all of the messages from my iPhone are there?
Dan

OK, I was a little confused, I managed to update both El Capitan (now 10.11.6) and iTunes (now 12.4.3). I again went through the procedure of syncing contacts in iTunes. They still aren't showing up when I launch the Contacts program on my iMac.
Dan

Are you using the same Apple ID on both devices? Are you signed in to iCloud on your iPhone and have contacts turned on? Have you logged in to iCloud.com to confirm your Contacts are stored in the cloud? Have you looked in Contacts Preferences and looked in the Accounts tab to make sure your correct iCloud Account is there?

Thank you for the reply, ferrar. According to the instructions given me by Slydude above, I should be able to do this without using iCloud. What I want to end up with is a list of my iPhone contacts on my iMac. I go through the process as instructed in the http://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-transfer-contacts-from-iphone-to-iphone-2016-3599049/ provided by Slydude. When I do this, it says it is working fine, however, at the end, my contacts have not been transferred to the contacts application on my iMac.
ferrar, I have an iCloud account on my phone (got it by accident as I didn't want it when I set up the phone), however, it does not show up in the contacts/preferences/account. The only thing that shows up in contacts/preference/accounts, for some reason, is my girlfriend's yahoo email. I tried adding my email but got an error message that the account could not be verified (it is my email account for my local ISP, Sasktel).
My reason for wanting the contacts list on my iMac is that I have not yet decided whether or not I really want an iPhone after I give back my work one in two days.
I also have a problem with Apple id's which was discussed in another thread some time ago. I bought my iMac in 2011 and have no recollection of setting up an Apple id at that time. When I upgraded from Lion to El Capitan I used the Apple id which I had set up for my work iPhone. Now, when I get updates, some of them work and some of them ask for an Apple id. The ones that ask for an Apple id do not recognize my phone Apple id? I have used the lost/find my Apple id at Apple support with the only two personal email addresses I have ever had and it cannot find my original Apple id (if I ever had one?).
Thanks for all advice, I appreciate it, I am in way over my head with all this stuff. If I can't get this to work today, I will spend a good bit of tomorrow manually typing all of my contacts into a Word document.
Dan

According to the instructions given me by Slydude above, I should be able to do this without using iCloud.

Click to expand...

Nope, the instruction in the link Sly provided mentions iCloud in step 1 and 3. Whatever you did isn't what the process said to do. Try it again, this time logging into iCloud as it says.

MacInWin, thank you kindly for your response. However, in the instructions in the link Slydude mentions in Step 1 (is actually called Tip 1 and has 7 steps) in the first paragraph it actually says "If you don't use iCloud, don't worry, you can always use iTunes or a third party software, we will show you how". Tip 3 (has 7 steps) is the one which shows how to transfer contacts without using iCloud. 1) Plug your old iPhone into your PC/Mac and open the latest version of iTunes. 2) Select your iPhone from the menu bar, click "info" and make sure tha "Sync contacts" is enabled. 3) Click "Sync" to sync you iPhone and all its contacts with your PC/Mac. 4) Once complete, unplug your old iPhone and replace it with your new iPhone. Steps 4 to 7 are about how to sync your contacts from the iMac to the new iPhone.
To my understanding, the way Slydude described it, once step 3 is completed, I should be able to launch my Contacts and all of the contacts from my iPhone should be there. Which is what I want for now as I am not sure that I am going to get another iPhone.
I would try the iCloud route, however, I have problems with that as well. I have never had iCloud on my iMac. When I set up my iPhone I opened an iCloud account (was an accident as I didn't want to). Anyway, when I launched the iCloud drive from Finder on my iMac, it came up with a screen to enable my iCloud account that I had set up on my iPhone. I followed the directions to do so. Now when I try to launch iCloud drive from Finder on my iMac, nothing happens, the screen is just blank white? Also, I just opened Launch Pad and iCloud is not there?
Regards
Dan

I think your best bet at this point instead of fooling around with iCloud and Apple IDs is to use an app which will transfer the contacts to your Mac from the iPhone. All three of these apps have trial versions so you can use them one time and then discard the app instead of buying it. 1. Senuti 2. iMazing 3. iExplorer

I'll let you do the searching for them.

iCloud drive is not iCloud. And if you haven't put any files on the iCloud drive, there isn't anything to show you. Hence the blank white Finder window. iCloud is a location in the Internet. To get there, go to iCloud.com in your browser, log in with your Apple ID and password (whatever password you used on your iPhone should work). From there you can see Contacts in iCloud to see if they got there from your iPhone. If you also activate iCloud on your Mac with that same AppleID and password and tell it to sync contacts, they will come down to the Mac from the iCloud contacts.

Thanks very much, chscag and MacInWin, I appreciate you patience. I will attempt this through iCloud as described by MacInWin. If I can't get that to work, I will try the software as suggested by chscag.
Thanks
Dan
edit: sorry, I tried to give both of you some reputation (thumbs up on your posts) however, got a message that I had to spread some around before giving either of you any more. will give some to Slydude and ferrar and then try give you guys some again.

Nope, neither worked. I can't go through iCloud as my iPhone is not mine. The administrators have backup turned off for iCloud on my iPhone and I could not sync the iPhone to iCloud unless it was turned on. I tried all of the software recommendations made by chscag. I downloaded Senuti, however it would not open on my computer. I got a failed to open message repeatedly. iMazing seemed to work. I got the contact off my phone onto iMazing. However, when I tried to export them to my iMac, the first time it only moved 10 out of 129 even though I had asked to select all items. It only gave me the one chance, every time after when I tried to export it would come up with the window to buy the software and would not proceed past this. The iExporer looked promising. I easily got all of the contacts into iExplorer, however, it would not let me export them to my iMac without purchasing the software.
Thanks for all the help. However, I give up, I only have about 100 contacts I really want to keep (phone numbers and email addresses) and am going to manually record them into a word document.
Thanks for all the help.

Sounds like a lot of work. I don't understand why Senuti would not open? Did you get a message from Gatekeeper? Something to the effect that only downloads from the Mac App Store and identified developers were allowed? If that's the message you received, open System Preferences, Security and Privacy. Click the small lock at the bottom, enter your admin password, and then select download from "anywhere". Then go ahead and try to open Senuti. After you get it working, you can change your security downloading back to where it was before.

Thanks chscag. I reset my download preferences, reloaded Senuti and got it to open. However, it would appear to be just for music and videos. When I plugged my iPhone in those were all that showed. I could not get it to see my contacts?
Regards
Dan

This is another similar piece of third part software for iPhone data recovery and although currently reduced in price $30.00 (they are all pretty expensive) and probably limited to a set number of transfers with the free trial version but according to the documentation on the trial version you can choose which contacts to transfer so it may be of some limited use to you.
https://www.cisdem.com/iphone-data-recovery-mac.html

thanks Rod, I have already hand written out all of the contacts info from my current phone. I will give your suggestion a try as if it works it will save me manually entering all the contact info into whatever phone I choose to get.
Thanks
Dan

I tried Cisdem, no go with it either. It seemed to be for recovering lost data and didn't seem to want to show me what was there and not lost. Anyway, the phone in question is now gone, sent back to the my company's phone lady and inactive. Still haven't decided what to do about a new phone.
Thanks to everyone
Dan

Senuti does indeed handle music and video only as you discovered. iMazing specifically mentions contacts on it's website. iExploorer may do this also but I haven't checked that out.