When someone shares a contact from their phone, or you export your address book, the result is usually a .vcf file. VCF stands for vCard, a plain-text format for contact details that phones, email clients and address books all understand. The current version is described in RFC 6350.
What is inside a VCF file
Open one in a text editor and you will see something like this:
BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:4.0
FN:Priya Shah
N:Shah;Priya;;;
ORG:Northwind Ltd
TITLE:Operations Manager
TEL;TYPE=work:+44 20 7946 0000
EMAIL:priya@example.com
END:VCARD
Key parts:
- BEGIN:VCARD / END:VCARD wrap one contact. A single file can hold many contacts one after another.
- FN is the full display name; N splits it into family name, given name and other parts.
- TEL, EMAIL, ORG and TITLE are phone, email, company and job title.
- VERSION matters: 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 differ slightly, and older apps may not read every field.
How to open or import a VCF file
- iPhone: tap the file and choose Create New Contact or Add to Existing Contact.
- Android: open it from Files or the attachment and choose to import into Contacts.
- Google Contacts: use Import and select the file.
- Outlook and Windows: double-click to open a contact window, then save.
- Mac: double-click to add to Contacts.
To read it without importing, open it in any plain text editor. The Docento.app text editor opens text files in the browser.
Fixing garbled names
If names show strange characters such as é instead of é, the file was saved in one character encoding and read in another. Most modern vCards use UTF-8. Re-saving the file as UTF-8 in a text editor usually fixes it. The same problem appears in spreadsheets; see fix garbled characters in CSV files.
Converting between VCF and CSV
Address books are often moved between systems via CSV. Many contact apps can export and import both. When converting, check that phone numbers keep their leading zeros and plus signs; spreadsheets often strip them. See CSV leading zeros and dates in Excel.
Privacy
A VCF export of your whole address book contains other people's personal data: names, numbers, emails, sometimes addresses and birthdays. Share it only when necessary, and delete old exports you no longer need.
Takeaway
A VCF file is a plain-text contact card in the vCard format. Tap or double-click to import it, open it in a text editor to read it, re-save as UTF-8 if names look garbled, and treat full address book exports as personal data.
