CSV and Excel to vCard (VCF) converter

How to convert a contact spreadsheet to VCF

1. Choose your file. A .csv, .tsv (tab-separated) or Excel .xlsx file with one contact per row. You can also paste CSV text.
2. Check the columns. Each column is matched to a contact detail for you (for example Mobile → Mobile phone, Company → Company). Change any that look wrong, or set a column to “not used”.
3. Pick the vCard version. Keep 3.0 unless the app you are importing into asks for 2.1.
4. Download the .vcf file and import it (see below). The preview shows the first contacts, so you can check names and numbers before you download.

Preparing the spreadsheet

• Put column names in the first row: Name, Phone, Email and so on. Any wording works, and you can fix the matching in step 2.
• Use either one full name column or separate first and last name columns. A full name is also split into first and last name, which phones use to sort contacts.
• A contact can have several phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Give each one its own column (Mobile, Work phone, Home phone…). Google’s export puts several values in one cell, separated by :::, and these are split too.
• Addresses can be split into street, city, state, postal code and country columns, or kept in one cell.
• Rows with no name, company, phone number or e-mail are skipped and listed so you can check them.

Excel tip: if phone numbers show as 4.47E+11, or have lost their leading zero or +, Excel has turned them into numbers. If you save that sheet as CSV, the CSV gets the changed value. Choose the .xlsx file itself instead: it keeps every digit Excel stored. A leading 0 or + that Excel has already dropped can’t be recovered, though. The other option is to format the phone column as Text and type the numbers again.

Columns that are recognised

The converter recognises the column names in a Google Contacts CSV export (First Name, Phone 1 - Label, Phone 1 - Value, E-mail 1 - Value, Address 1 - Street, Labels…) and in an Outlook CSV export (Mobile Phone, Business Phone, E-mail Address, Home Street…, where Title means Mr/Ms). It also knows common hand-made headings such as Name, Mobile No., Email ID, Company, Designation, City, DOB and Remarks. In Google exports, the label column (Mobile, Work, Home) sets each number’s type.

vCard 3.0 or 2.1?

vCard 3.0 works with iPhone and iPad, macOS Contacts, iCloud, Google Contacts, Android and current Outlook versions, and handles every language. Choose vCard 2.1 only for older phones, car kits or older Outlook versions that reject 3.0. Letters outside the English alphabet are then saved in an older form called “quoted-printable”, which those devices expect.

Importing the .vcf file

iPhone or iPad

Send the file to yourself (Mail, Messages, AirDrop) or save it to Files. Tap it, then tap Add All Contacts. If you use iCloud contacts, you can also import it at icloud.com → Contacts → + → Import Contact.

Android

Copy the file to the phone. In the Contacts app, open settings (or Fix & manage) → Import from file, choose the account to save to, and pick the .vcf file.

Google Contacts and Gmail

Go to contacts.google.com → Import → select the file. Google accepts up to 3,000 contacts per import, so split bigger files with the VCF splitter. Google also adds a label to each import, so you can find those contacts later or remove them together.

Mac

Open the Contacts app → File → Import, or double-click the .vcf file.

Outlook

Classic Outlook for Windows imports only the first contact from a .vcf file that holds several. But Outlook can import CSV files directly (File → Open & Export → Import/Export → Import from another program or file → Comma Separated Values), so for Outlook you usually don’t need a vCard at all. If your contacts are already in a .vcf file, the VCF to CSV converter makes a CSV that Outlook can import.