Outlook Vcard Export

[Ophelia Gurin]

Forwhat it's worth - I just came across this thread looking for the same export to individual .VCF files from outlook. I haev 2007 (don't know if that makes a difference) but I selected all contacts and dragged them to a new email message to be added as individual .VCF files. After they were all added, I clicked in the attachments section of the new email, hit CTRL-A to highlight all of them, then left-click-dragged the first (and therefore all of them) to the folder I wanted the individual .VCF files in. A few minutes of Outlook "thinking" about my 400 contacts they were all there!

First, export all your contacts in Outlook to vCards (I found emailing them to yourself is the easiest. If you get an error message "to many attachments..." you can save them from the email in your sent items folder) and copy the vCards to the memory card on your phone.

I'm trying to import all the contacts I have into iCloud. First, I made sure all my contacts are properly stored in Outlook 2010. Then, as support for exporting is simply appalling, I had to find something on the Internet, which worked fine. Just export all cards and then use a DOS command to put them all into one file:

Then, I tried importing it into iCloud. But it only imported about 50 cards of the total of 117 I have. So I checked which ones were not imported and I tried to import the ones that failed as individual cards. iCloud them said: cannot import because the format is not OK. And it gave me a button saying: "Learn more". So I clicked that and ended up on this page:

But looking at the requirements and limitations, my vcards all fall well within those!! I just don't have enough information to go on right now. Did I maybe use some fields within the cards that iCloud just doesn't want to take? I'm not sure, but I cannot proceed now...

I just synced the contacts that were imported correctly into iCloud to my iPhone (the odd 50 ones). Looking on my iPhone I see that ALL contacts have imported correctly!!! Including pictures and all. Contacts I tried to import individually into icloud later on (because they didn't show up in iCloud) even appeared as duplicates... weird...

The problem appears to be that iCloud DOES import all the contacts (and why shouldn't it, they comply with all the limitations set by iCloud), but somehow the web interface on www.icloud.com cannot show all contacts for some reason.

Since I just switched over to iCloud - was playing around - and trying to import just one VCF - virtually nothing in the contact - name phone number and an address, pretty standard and bare minimum in my case for contact details.

Tired of Apples stuff not working. Most up-to-date everything dedicated to Mac is a good description of me... and Goodle Sync working better with address book (locally stored however) aka "On my Mac". Yes even in Lion.

I am having the same issue and alert message when trying to import a vCard into iCloud/contacts. I tried it on a PC exporting the vCard from Outlook, and also on my MacBook exporting the vCard from Address Book (Lion). Same failure on both machines. I sometimes force sync contacts (one time only) from Outlook via iTunes on my PC to my iPhone and iPad and that worked fine. But the added contact nevers appears in iCloud/contacts. iCloud should sync the new contact entry from my iOS devices or from my MacBook address book, shouldn't it? Also, I notice that I have multiple contact categories on my iPhone and iPad (which differ from each other) and only one on iCloud/contacts. On my iOS devices, selecting All on iCloud, the mising contact is also missing within that category. How can I get iCloud contacts to update or to include all the contacts on my iOS or Address Book? Is is possible to copy a category or group to iCloud/contacts from another source? Since vCard importing seems to fail ow can it be done?

In order to be able to import outlook .vcf cards into ICLOUD, you will not be able to do it directly, you need to export from outlook, then import to google account, then export out of the google account as *vCard format (for importing into Apple Address Book or another application)* and there you will be able to get all your outlook contacts, exactly as they are, into your icloud account.

there are some limitations, as outlook does not let you EXPORT several vcards at the same time, and google does not let you import several vcards at the same time. here are the instructions to get this rolling.

2. now go to CONTACTS, hit ctrl+a (will select all your contacts), then go up to the ribbon and on the SHARE section, where it reads Forward Contact, click on the dropdown and select *As Business Cards* (if you dont do step one, outlook will crash attempting to create images of the vcards for each contact on an email message).

5.time to merge all vcards into a single one, for them to be uploaded into your GMAIL account, follow the instructions here -to-combine-all-vcf-files-to-single.htm l. this link will teach you how to merge various VCF using the command prompt.

Do not try to export a CSV file from outlook to import into gmail, because it will dump most of the contact info into NOTES instead of the fields. I hope it works for you all as it worked for me.

Thanks to Mr Shawn Parks for a full solution, with no crazy imports or Gmail stuff in the middle. Install the icloud control panel ( ) and be sure to, at minimum, sync contacts. In addition to your personal address books you will see the icloud contact group in the outlook contact folders. Then just move the outlook contacts to Icloud and THEY WILL BE ALL THERE, in cloud and all your I devices. Don't forget to sync your contacts with I cloud in all devices!!!!

Unfortunately this solution doesn't help those of us using Windows XP since the iCloud Control Panel doesn't work under this version of Windows. We should be able to use iTunes to force a sync with Outlook contacts to any iOS device on which iCloud contacts sync is turned on and thereby update iCloud contacts. The format error reported when trying to import a vCard directly into iCloud is bogus if you can 'move' them into iCloud as you suggest above. This is still a problem with that Apple is not fixing.

Right. Apple should fix the vcf import issue, and microsoft should work on a button to freaking export contacts into one single vcf file, to make everyone's life easier. Not even exporting a csv from outlook and then re importing the same, brings the contact info ok, because in the middle, the headers of the files are different than what outlook expects to map the import (and we are talking about OUTLOOK TO OUTLOOK)....nevertheless, look at the previous response I posted, that will work for XP with Outlook 2003, with the obvious differences in the outlook menues, that you will need to sort thru. I would also look at upgrading to windows 7 or 8 as cloud integration is being more considered now, and installing the cloud control panel makes it so much easier......hace a good day!!

I am experieincing the exact same issue, and spoke with a "Senior level advisor" at Apple who was stymied and awaiting a solution form Engineering. What is bizarre is that I can import a vCard that I've sent to myself via Outlook on my coporate PC, and it imports without issue to my Address Book on my local Mac. It also shows up immediately on both of my iOS devices but NOT in iCloud!!!! How is this possible? That said, there ARE a few vCards that CAN be imported successfully from Outlook into iCloud, and those are contatcs with MINIMAL information, so the issue must relate somewhow to the nature of fields that exist in the vCard, degree of information, etc. Now, if I CREATE a new contact from scratch on my Mac the contact immediately displays and syncs (as it should) into iCloud. Apple needs to address what should be a routine procedure and make it right ASAP. has anyone found a solution yet?

I ran into the same issue but all I did was to enable icloud syncronization with contacts on the icloud control panel on my laptop. That creates a folder that you can just drag and drop your contact Vcards onto the Icloud contact folder. Those contact will be replicated on all of your Icloud capable devices.

I was messing with transferring my Android phone contacts to my iPhone. I exported my Android mobile contacts to SD card(.vcf format), transferred it to my Mac and tried to import it to my iphone via iPhone. But it was failiong all the time.

Thank you wesley.elder! I exported contacts from an Android phone to a .vcf, and like you, every vcard block said VERSION:2.1. I opened the file in a text editor and replaced *all* occurrences of VERSION:2.1 with VERSION:3.0, then iCloud had no problem importing names, numbers, email addresses and even pictures.

I would think that making it easy to switch from another platform would be a priority, and the iCloud team would try to make it as smooth as possible. Migrating contacts from your old phone to a new one is kind of a big deal. Is there an easier way than using vcard files?

Either way, it seems kind of silly that the iCloud Contact import method actually checks the VCARD block for a proper version number but doesn't give the user any indication that's why it is failing...just that it failed to import X number of contacts. I spent much more time than should have been necessary to get this fixed.

Outlook already allows you to convert your contacts into vCard format, but only one at a time. But with the Outlook vCard Converter add-in, you can easily import or export all your contacts in vCard format with one click of your mouse.

How do you know if you need a vCard converter? Outlook already allows you to convert your contacts into vCard format (a vcf file). However, you can only convert one contact at a time. Plus, Outlook can only read the first entry of a vcard file no matter how many contacts are contained in that file.

Now however, you can easily convert all your contacts to vCard format with one click of your mouse with the Outlook vCard Converter add-in. It allows you to export all your contacts within a folder, or you can choose to export just the ones you select. In addition, you can import multiple contacts from a single vcf file.

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