Glossary
What Is a VCF (vCard) File?
A VCF file is a vCard, a plain-text format for contact details. One card holds a person's name, phone numbers, email addresses, postal address, company, and sometimes a photo. Phones, email clients, and address books all read and write it, so a .vcf file is the usual way to move contacts between devices or attach a business card to an email.
TL;DRA VCF file is a plain-text vCard that phones and address books can import. Convert a CSV contact list to VCF to load it into any of them.
2011
the year RFC 6350 published vCard 4.0, the current version of the format
What Is Inside a VCF File
Each contact sits between BEGIN:VCARD and END:VCARD. Every line inside is one property written as NAME:value. These are the properties you meet most:
- VERSION: the vCard version number. Every card must have it.
- FN: the full name as it should be shown.
- N: the structured name, in the order family name, given name, middle names, prefix, suffix.
- TEL and EMAIL: phone numbers and email addresses. An optional TYPE tells a work number from a mobile one.
- ADR: the postal address, split into seven parts separated by semicolons.
- ORG and TITLE: the company and the job title.
Here is a short vCard 3.0 contact:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:Lee;Anna;;;
FN:Anna Lee
ORG:Example Corp
TITLE:Sales Manager
TEL;TYPE=CELL:+1-555-0142
EMAIL;TYPE=INTERNET:anna@example.com
ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;12 Main St;Springfield;IL;62701;USA
END:VCARD
One VCF file can hold many contacts, one card after another, so a full address book export is often a single .vcf file.
vCard 2.1, 3.0, and 4.0
Version 2.1 came from the versit consortium in the 1990s. Version 3.0 is defined in RFC 2426 (1998), and version 4.0 in RFC 6350 (2011). The differences that matter most in practice:
- Text encoding: 2.1 files often use a CHARSET parameter and ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE for names with accents or non-Latin letters. Version 3.0 dropped quoted-printable, and 4.0 requires UTF-8.
- Required fields: 3.0 needs both N and FN, while 4.0 needs only FN.
- New properties in 4.0: KIND says whether a card describes a person, a group, an organization, or a location. Version 4.0 also added GENDER, ANNIVERSARY, LANG, MEMBER, and RELATED.
If names show up as garbled symbols after an import, the file is often a 2.1 export with quoted-printable text, or a file saved in a legacy code page instead of UTF-8.
What Opens VCF Files
The Contacts apps on iPhone and Mac import .vcf files and can export contacts as vCards. Google Contacts imports and exports them, which also covers most Android phones. Outlook opens a vCard as a contact, though some versions read only the first card in a file that holds several.
How to Create a VCF File from CSV
To turn a spreadsheet of contacts into vCards, save it as CSV and convert it. The
free CSV to VCF converter online runs in your browser. You map your columns to vCard fields, pick vCard 3.0 or 4.0, and download the file. Nothing is uploaded. For many files or regular jobs, the desktop
CSV to VCF converter software works offline on Windows.
To go the other way and open contacts in Excel, the VCF to CSV converter online turns a vCard file into a spreadsheet.
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