How to Use the LinkedIn Activity Extractor

Before you start

• Awareness of LinkedIn’s safety limits:
  • Standard accounts: up to 80 profiles per day.
  • Premium/Sales Navigator accounts: up to 150 profiles per day.
  • If extracting 100+ activities per profile, cut these numbers in half.

Step 1: Choose which LinkedIn profiles to extract activity from

You can provide your profiles in three ways:

1. My Lists:
   Choose a saved LinkedIn Leads list you’ve already created in PhantomBuster.
2. A URL:
   • Paste a single LinkedIn profile URL.
   • Provide a Google Sheet with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s shared with “Anyone with the link”).

   • Upload a CSV file with LinkedIn profile URLs (make sure it’s publicly accessible, and note that CSV upload is only available on paid plans).

     → If you’re using a spreadsheet, the Phantom defaults to the first column (A). To use a different column, enter the column’s header name in the field “Name of column containing profile URLs.”

3. My Phantoms:
   Use results from another Phantom as input (e.g. LinkedIn Search Export results).

Step 2: Connect your LinkedIn account

To let the Phantom act on your behalf:

1. Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your LinkedIn session in one click.
2. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, you can retrieve your session cookie manually (see our cookie guide).

Check your browser user agent
Make sure your browser is up to date before connecting your account. 
→ If your Chrome or Firefox version is outdated, your session cookie may expire much more quickly, and you’ll need to reconnect often.

Step 3: Configure activity extraction behavior

In the Behavior step, you can set how many profiles to process and what types of activity to capture:

1. Profiles to process per launch (optional):
   Enter how many profiles the Phantom should process per run.
   • Best practice: up to 10 profiles per launch if retrieving fewer than 100 results per profile.
   • Up to 5 profiles per launch if retrieving 100+ results per profile.
2. Types of activity to extract:
   Choose which activity you’d like to capture for each profile:
   • Posts
   • Articles
   • Comments
   • Reactions
   • Documents
   • Newsletters
   • Events
3. Number of items to extract per activity type (optional):
   Default is 10 per type. Increase this if you want more, or set your own limit.
4. Watcher mode (optional):
   Enable Watcher mode if you want the Phantom to:
   • Re-process your entire spreadsheet on every launch.
   • Collect as many visible posts, comments, or activities as possible in the first run.
   • Then automatically keep monitoring those same profiles in future launches to capture new activity as it appears.

Advanced settings (dropdown in setup)

• Only retrieve activities after a specific date (optional):
  Set a cutoff date to capture only the most recent posts, comments, or articles.
  Keep in mind:
  • The number of activities the Phantom can extract depends on how many posts LinkedIn actually loads when visiting a profile.
  • LinkedIn does not always display the full post history, especially for older content (e.g., posts more than a year old).
  • Even if you set a date range in the Phantom’s setup, the Phantom can only collect the activities visible during that session.

Result file settings (dropdown in setup)

1. Name your results file (optional)

   • You can customize the file name.

     If you rename the file between launches, the Phantom will create a new results file and start processing inputs from scratch.

2. Fields to keep (optional)
   • Export only the fields you care about by listing them (comma-separated).
     Example: profileUrl, postUrl, action.
   • This generates a second CSV file with just those fields.
   • Learn more in our guide: Customize how your Phantom results files are saved.

Step 4: Select launch frequency

Choose how often the Phantom should run:

1. Launch manually: Start the Phantom yourself whenever you need.
2. Launch once at a specific time: schedule a one-time run at a set date and time.
3. Launch repeatedly: schedule regular runs (e.g. once per day, several times during working hours).
4. Launch after another Phantom: chain automations together so this Phantom starts right after another finishes.
5. Advanced scheduling: customize the exact minutes, hours, days, or months when the Phantom should run.

→ For a complete walkthrough of scheduling options, see our guide to scheduling Phantoms automatically.

Step 5 (Optional): Advanced settings

Advanced settings are available if you want to fine-tune how your Phantom runs, but by default they’re already optimized for most use cases.

We recommend leaving them as they are unless a guide specifically instructs you to change something.

→ For a detailed overview of all advanced options (like execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management), see our Advanced settings guide.

Launch and results

When you’re ready:

1. Click Launch to start your Phantom.
2. Once it finishes, open the Results tab in the Phantom console to view extracted activity.
3. Download your results as a CSV or JSON file.

→ To learn how to export your data to Google Sheets, integrate with other tools, or reuse it in more automations, check our Access and Export your Phantom Results guide.

Export and input limits on the Free plan
If you’re on the Free plan or Free trial, some features are limited:
- CSV exports include only the first 10 rows of results.
- CSV download links (for dynamic viewing in Google Sheets or integrations) are not available.
- JSON exports are not available.
- CSV upload as an input method is not supported.
To unlock all features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

What you give (Input) and What you get (Output)

This section gives you a detailed breakdown of everything you need to provide to run this Phantom, and everything you’ll receive once it completes.

What you give (Input)

What you get (Output)

Tips and troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Invalid input → This Phantom only accepts LinkedIn profile URLs. Company pages cannot be used, and if you enter one, comments will not be extracted because LinkedIn does not display them there.
• Saved posts not supported → The Phantom can't extract data from your saved posts.
• The output doesn't include profile details like name, company, or headline.The LinkedIn Activity Extractor only outputs activity data alongside the LinkedIn profile URL - not profile information from your input. To get both in one file, run the LinkedIn Profile Scraper on the same list.
• Extracting too many profiles per launch (risking disconnections or account blocks).
• Forgetting to filter activity, leading to large, heavy runs.

If you run into issues

• Check how to troubleshoot your phantom using Logs.
• Browse the Fix Issues & Troubleshoot Errors section for solutions to common problems.
• Review our Automation Rate Limits by Platform guide.
• Check our Best Practices for Social Media Automation guide.

Suggested automations

After extracting LinkedIn activities, you can:

• Warm up leads → Engage with their content using LinkedIn Auto Liker or LinkedIn Auto Commenter.
• Personalize outreach → Use the extracted posts as context for tailored invites and follow-ups with LinkedIn Outreach.
• Enrich and segment leads → If you need more details, run LinkedIn Profile Scraper. You can enrich either before setting up outreach, or later from the LinkedIn Leads page to segment leads more effectively.