What is vCard – Everything you should know about vCard

What is vCard

What is vCard?

vCard is a virtual business card that you can exchange with others electronically - just as you would exchange a paper business card. You can send contact information to someone else in vCard format, as long as the recipient uses an E-mail program that supports vCards.

The feature of vCard

• 1. vCards carry vital personal information such as name, addresses (business, home, mailing), telephone numbers (home, business, fax, data), email addresses and URLs.
• 2. All vCards can also have graphics and multimedia including photographs, company logos, audio clips and more.
• 3. Geographic and time zone information in vCards let others know when to contact you.
• 4. vCards support multiple languages.
• 5. The vCard spec can be transferred among all kinds of vCard applications, and compatible with different computer systems.

How to create a VCF card?

The virtual business cards, also known as VCF cards, are unique computer files that have the ".vcf" extension and are stored in your computer's email or contact collection program. vCards can be read by many programs and email clients, the most popular one is Microsoft Outlook. Here I'll take Outlook Windows as an example and show you how to create a vCard, then you can try to create VCF cards with any similar E-mail programs.

1. Open Microsoft Outlook by clicking on the program's icon on the "Desktop", click "File" > "New" > "Contact". The New Contact dialog box will open.

2. Enter your contact information into the dialog box--your full name, telephone numbers, email address, address, company name and job title.

3. Click "File" > "Save"

4. Click "File" > "Export to vCard file...". Then the vCard File dialog box will open.

5. Navigate to the destination where you want to save the VCF card to.

6. Click "Save". Your VCF card is now created and saved to your computer.

The difference between CSV and VCF formats.

Both CSV and vCard formats are used as common ways of transferring contacts between programs and services.

However, there are fundamental differences between CSV and vCard. CSV can be particularly useful when transferring contacts between two or more contact programs or services. The biggest shortcoming of CSV is the lack of standardization. There are no set rules when it comes to defining how contact data is written to the CSV file by the originating program or service and how contact data is read by the destination program or service upon import. Also, CSV cannot support media contents like photos.

How to convert between CSV and VCF files?

Since CSV and VCF files are different in many ways, you need to use the proper file format when it comes to contacts. To convert between CSV and VCF files, you could turn to CSV and VCF converters. Choose the one you prefer from the Internet, and you can complete the conversion easily.

Transfer and Manage VCF Contacts

Contacts in your phone may be one of the most important things that you need to transfer when your mobile devices run into some accidents. Instead of entering them one by one on your new phone, it would be much easier to import or export contacts all in once. VCF contacts can be transferred freely between your PC and your phone; therefore, it becomes the most widely used contact formats.

To transfer and manage VCF contacts, we need the help from third-party transfer software. For example, FoneTrans is an efficient program that supports to import or export VCF contacts from your iPhone to PC. Free Android Data Recovery allows you to manage Android phone contacts easily.