Why the iPhone needs a .vcf
It is fair to expect Contacts to take a list of people. It doesn’t. Contacts on the iPhone has no CSV import, and neither does Contacts on iCloud.com. Both read a plain-text contact file that ends in .vcf, or vCard; the page on what a VCF file is shows one line by line. Two places do accept a CSV as it is, Google Contacts and Contacts on a Mac, both covered further down.
Get the spreadsheet ready
The sheet needs one header row of column names, then one person per row. Save it as a CSV. In Excel, choose File > Save As and the file format “CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (*.csv)”. In Google Sheets it is File > Download > Comma Separated Values (.csv), and in Numbers, File > Export To > CSV.
Before you save, fix four things:
- Put first and last names in two columns; the converter keeps them as typed. From a single full-name column it takes the last word as the last name, so “Juan Carlos de la Cruz” is filed under “Cruz”.
- Format the phone column as Text. Excel treats a phone number as a number: it drops a leading zero or plus sign and may show a long one as 4.47E+11.
- Give each kind of number its own column, such as Mobile, Work Phone, Home Phone and Fax. The column name sets the number’s type.
- Remove merged cells and any title rows above the header. The first row must be the column names.
Convert the CSV to VCF
The CSV to VCF converter runs in the browser, on a computer or on the iPhone. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
- At the top of the tool, switch the direction to CSV → VCF.
- Drop the .csv on the page, choose it, or paste its text. Leave the separator on “Detect (comma or semicolon)” unless the file uses tabs.
- Read the preview table. “Column in your file” lists your headers, “First value” shows the first person’s entry, and “Becomes” is the contact field that column will fill.
- Correct any “Becomes” menu that is wrong. A column whose name the tool doesn’t know is set to “Ignore this column” until you pick a field.
- Check “First contact as vCard”, which shows the first person as vCard text.
- Select Download .vcf. The file is named contacts.vcf and holds every contact.
How columns become contact fields
| Column in your file | Becomes | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Name or Full Name | First and last name | The last word becomes the last name |
| Title | Job title | In a file that also has Job Title, Title is the name prefix, as in an Outlook export |
| Mobile, Work Phone, Home Phone, Fax | A number of that type | One kind of number per column |
| Phone | A number with no type | Rename it Mobile or Work Phone if the type matters |
| Phone 2, Email 2 | A second number or email | Several values in one cell work too, separated by semicolons |
| A row with no name, email or phone | Nothing | It is left out, and the status line says how many were |
The converter also knows the header rows of Google Contacts, Outlook, HubSpot, Salesforce and Krane exports.
Whether accents survive depends on how the CSV was saved. The converter detects UTF-8 and UTF-16 and reads anything else as the Western European set, or Windows-1252.
Excel’s plain “CSV (Comma delimited)” uses the computer’s local set of letters, or code page, and saves letters outside it as question marks. Those are in the file before a converter reads it, and none can turn them back. “CSV UTF-8” keeps the letters, and Google Sheets always writes UTF-8.
Put the .vcf on the iPhone
AirDrop, Mail or Files
- AirDrop contacts.vcf to the phone, email it to yourself, or save it to Files.
- Tap the file. The iPhone shows the contacts in it.
- Tap “Add All N Contacts”, where N is the count, then “Create New Contacts”.
New contacts go to the phone’s default account. It is set in Settings > Apps > Contacts > Default Account on iOS 18 and later, and in Settings > Contacts before that.
iCloud.com
- Go to icloud.com/contacts and sign in.
- Select the Add button, then choose Import vCard.
- Select contacts.vcf.
Apple limits iCloud to 50,000 contact cards in total and to vCards of up to 256 KB each.
A Mac with iCloud Contacts
- Double-click contacts.vcf. Contacts opens and asks to add the cards.
- Confirm. With iCloud Contacts turned on, the cards sync to the iPhone.
Two routes that skip the .vcf
With Google Contacts or a Mac you don’t need the converter.
At contacts.google.com, choose Import, then Select file. The people show on the iPhone once the Google account is added to the phone with Contacts turned on. Google’s help says an import of more than 3,000 contacts at a time may have problems, so split a longer file first.
Contacts on a Mac imports a CSV too. Choose File > Import, pick the file, change the encoding if necessary and review the field labels. Then select “Ignore first card”. Without it, the header row is imported as a person.
Krane for iPhone
With Krane: paper cards without the spreadsheet
If you typed this spreadsheet from a stack of business cards, the next stack can skip the file. Krane on iPhone, iPhone Duo and iPad reads each printed card with the camera and adds the contact to Apple Contacts, with no CSV or .vcf in between. The business card scanner is free for 10 scans a week. One limit: Krane can’t import a CSV or a .vcf.