Guide
Converting vCard (.vcf) contacts into a spreadsheet
Contacts travel as vCard files: one .vcf exported from an iPhone, iCloud, Android, Google Contacts or Outlook can hold hundreds of people. As a spreadsheet, the same data is much easier to clean, deduplicate, sort, print or import into a CRM or newsletter tool. This tool converts a .vcf file into a table with one row per contact.
Getting a .vcf file
On iCloud.com, open Contacts, select the contacts and export as vCard. Google Contacts: Export › vCard. Android’s Contacts app can export to a .vcf on the device. Outlook can save contacts as vCards one by one. Many CRMs and email tools also export vCards.
Three vCard versions
vCard 2.1 is common on older phones and stores non-ASCII text in quoted-printable encoding with a character set. Version 3.0 is the most widespread; 4.0 is the newest. All three are read. Folded long lines, escaped commas and semicolons, and grouped properties are handled, so addresses and notes arrive in one piece.
Several emails and phones
People often have a work and a private email, a mobile and an office number, a home and a work address. In the detailed layout, each gets its own numbered column, such as Email 1, Email 2, Phone 1, Phone 2, together with its type. The number of columns matches the contact with the most entries, so nothing is dropped.
Labels
Types like Mobile, Work, Home and Fax are taken from the vCard’s TYPE parameters, from the bare types used by vCard 2.1, and from Apple’s custom labels, so a number labelled “School” on an iPhone keeps that label.
Google Contacts layout
This layout follows the column naming of Google’s own exports, such as First Name, E-mail 1 - Label and E-mail 1 - Value. Google recognizes columns by such names when you import a CSV. Import into a new label first, so a test import is easy to review.
Outlook layout
Outlook’s CSV import has fixed fields: up to three emails, and one mobile, home, business and fax number each, plus home and business addresses. The tool fills those slots by type; a phone without a matching slot goes into Other Phone.
Photos and other data
Contact photos cannot go into a spreadsheet cell, so they are skipped; the summary shows how many contacts had one. Names, organization, job title, birthday, notes, websites and categories are all included.
Privacy
Address books contain other people’s personal data. The file is converted on your device and never uploaded.
Cleaning an address book
Once your contacts are in a table, problems become visible: people listed twice under slightly different names, numbers in five formats, missing country codes, old company names. Sort by name to spot duplicates, standardize numbers, then convert the cleaned table back into contacts with CSV to vCard and import it into a fresh address book.
Large exports
Address books with thousands of contacts convert in a moment, because the work happens on your own device.
Related tools
To go the other way, CSV to vCard creates contact cards from a spreadsheet. Clean numbers with Clean Phone Numbers and remove repeated contacts with Dedupe CSV.
Checked against the current version of the vCard to CSV on .