CSV to vCard (VCF)
Turn a contact list from Excel or CSV into a VCF file your phone imports in one tap
Your files stay with you. Conversion happens inside the browser; no file is ever uploaded to a server.
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How it works
Choose your contact list as a CSV file. If it lives in Excel, use File → Save As → "CSV (Comma delimited)" first; in Google Contacts pick Export → Google CSV, in Outlook pick Export → Comma Separated Values. The tool reads the first row and works out which column holds the first name, last name, phone, e-mail, company, address or birthday; English, German, French, Spanish and Turkish headers are recognised. If there is no header row it looks at the cells instead: anything with an @ is an e-mail, anything with at least six digits is a phone number, the first remaining text is the name. Tap Convert and every row becomes one vCard 3.0 entry in a single .vcf file. A 180-row customers.csv becomes a 180-card customers.vcf; the result line reads "180 contacts · 214 phone numbers · 96 e-mail addresses", and skipped empty rows or numbers Excel damaged are counted separately. Open the file on your phone: Android offers "Add to contacts", iPhone offers "Add all"; in Google Contacts use the Import button. Nothing is uploaded — reading and writing both happen in your browser.
This tool is also known as csv to vcf, csv to vcf converter, csv to vcard, convert csv to vcf, import contacts from excel to phone, excel to vcf.
What is VCF?
VCF is the file extension for vCard contact cards: each card starts with BEGIN:VCARD, ends with END:VCARD and holds lines for the name (N and FN), phone (TEL), e-mail (EMAIL) and address (ADR). Hundreds of cards can sit in one file, and Android, iPhone, Google Contacts and Outlook open it and add the people to the address book. Version 3.0 is the most widely supported: 2.1 belongs to old handsets and needs special encoding for accented letters, while 4.0 is still read incompletely by some Android versions. That is why this tool writes 3.0.
What is CSV contact list?
A CSV is a plain-text table with one person per row and one field per column; Excel's "Save as CSV", the Google Contacts export and the Outlook export all produce it. The file does not say which column is the phone and which the e-mail — only the headers in the first row give a hint, and this tool matches those headers in five languages. Excel in most of Europe splits columns with semicolons, Google and English Outlook with commas; both are detected.
What is the difference between CSV and VCF?
A CSV is a table: it keeps people row by row but never states what each field means, which is why phones cannot import a CSV straight into the address book. A VCF labels every field by name (TEL, EMAIL, ADR) and writes one card per person; the Contacts app reads those labels and files the number as a number and the e-mail as an e-mail. In short, CSV is the right format for editing and storing the list in a spreadsheet, VCF is the right format for loading the same list onto a phone, into Google or into Outlook. This tool makes the table-to-cards trip; the reverse direction (dumping an address book into a table) is a separate job.
Why do phone numbers turn into 5.32E+09 in Excel?
Excel treats a cell made only of digits as a number: it drops a leading zero and, past ten digits, switches to scientific notation. 07700900123 becomes 7.7E+09 and is saved to the CSV in that form; the real digits are gone from the file and no tool can bring them back. This converter leaves such cells blank and reports "3 numbers were damaged by Excel" in the result line so you can fix the source.
The fix is on the Excel side: select the phone column and set the cell format to Text, or write numbers with spaces or a leading plus sign (+44 7700 900123) — Excel never treats those as numbers. Google Contacts and Outlook exports do not have this problem because they already store numbers as text.
Which column becomes what — and where does the rest go?
With separate first-name and last-name columns the displayed name is the two joined; with a single "Name" column the displayed name stays as typed and the last word goes into the surname field phones use for sorting ("Mary Ann Smith" → surname Smith). The phone header sets the type: "Mobile" becomes mobile, "Home Phone" home, "Business Phone" work; the Mobile/Home/Work label in Google's "Phone 1 - Label" column is carried over as well. Several numbers in one cell separated by " ::: " each get their own line.
Company, job title, e-mail, website, birthday and notes are written to the card too; address columns (street, city, postal code, country) merge into one address line. Columns with unrecognised headers are skipped silently — if you want such a column on the card, rename its header to "Notes". Birthdays are read as YYYY-MM-DD or M/D/YYYY; a date that cannot be read is counted in the result line.
How do I load the VCF file onto my phone?
Android: tap the downloaded .vcf and the Contacts app offers to add everything, or go to Contacts → Settings → Import → .vcf file. iPhone: e-mail the file to yourself, open it in Mail and tap "Add all"; opening it from the Files app works as well. Google Contacts: contacts.google.com → Import → pick the file; if the account is signed in on your phone the contacts appear there by themselves.
If a person already exists in the address book most phones create a second entry rather than merging. Before a bulk import check whether your contacts app has a "Merge duplicates" feature; in Google Contacts it sits in the left menu. Cards are written in vCard 3.0 — the version Android, iPhone, Google, Outlook and macOS Contacts all read.
Frequently asked questions
Can I choose an Excel file directly?
No, the tool reads CSV or plain text. In Excel use File → Save As → "CSV (Comma delimited)", or run the workbook through the XLSX to CSV tool on this site first; European Excel saves with semicolons, which the tool detects on its own.
What happens without a header row?
The tool looks at the cells: a cell with an @ is an e-mail, a cell with at least six digits is a phone number, the first remaining text is the name and the second the company. A hand-typed list such as "Mary Smith,07700 900123" becomes a card that way. In this mode a row without a phone number or e-mail is skipped.
Will accented names show correctly on the phone?
Yes. The output is UTF-8 vCard 3.0, so names like Müller, García or Ayşe display correctly on Android, iPhone and Google Contacts. If the source CSV was saved in the old Windows encoding (names showing as ü), the tool recognises that and repairs it.
Can I get one VCF file per contact?
No; one CSV becomes one .vcf and all its cards import in a single step. To split people into groups, divide the CSV in Excel first and choose each part separately — every part produces its own .vcf.