Open vCard File Online & Edit in Excel

With these free VCF viewer tools, You can open vcf file online, view & edit the contacts details in it.

A vCard, also known as a VCF (vCard File) file, is a file format used to store contact information, such as name, address, phone number, email, etc. It is commonly used to store contact information in an electronic form, such as on a computer or mobile device

This page has 4 choices, with the best one first.

  1. Google
  2. Text Editor (Notepad, Textpad)
  3. Excel
  4. Outlook

First one is absolutely easy & best method to open vcf file online for free.

1. Google – Open VCF File Online – Export to Excel

You can use your Google account as a free online vcf file viewer. Follow these steps to view vcf file online with Google.

  • Login to Google/Gmail
  • Goto Google Contact Page.
  • In menu, click “More” -> “Import”
  • Browse & choose vcf file.
  • Click ok to view VCF file contacts.

Google will read the vCard file & display all the contact list details online in your browser itself.

Other possible methods to open vcf file offline in your PC are as follows.

2. Text Editor –  Open vCard File

A .vcf (vCard) is a non-encrypted text format file. Its content can be viewed by using any text editor.

Here are the steps to open VCF file in a text editor app.

  • Open a text editor like Notepad or Text pad.
  • Click Open File in Menu (or Ctrl + O).
  • Select the folder path of file to open.
  • Choose VCF file you want to view.
  • Click ‘Open’.

These editors will display the content right on your screen & does not need a special VCF file viewer for this.

But it will not be aligned properly or formatted like a table structure. Still you will be able to view the contacts details present in it along with fields like: First Name, Last Name, Email id, Phone number, Address, Company, Website etc.,

To understand its content, read next section in this topic that explains the syntax and architecture of a vCard format.

3. Excel – Open VCF File

This is an in-house Excel app that can be used to open a Vcf file. It was programmed using Excel VBA macro.

You can build your own VCF file viewer with just Excel & vba by referring this page below. This page also has a sample code in VBA.

Read it here –> How to open VCF file in Excel?

or Directly buy using this this Offer:

Its only 5$ USD – Features unlimited contacts conversion

4. Outlook – VCF Viewer (Not recommended) 

If a vCard file has just one contact details in it, then this is a very quick method. It is better to open vCard file using a text editor before trying this method – just to double confirm how many contacts are there in the vcf file.

Here are the steps to import a contact detail in to Outlook Contacts & view the details.

  • In Menu click File-> Import/Export
  • Choose Import a vCard file(.vcf)
  • Browse folder & choose the vcf file.
  • Contact will be imported.

Note: With Outlook, you will be able to see only first contact detail even if the vcard has more than one entry.

How to Open VCF file & Read it? – More concepts

Now, we realized that a simple text editor is enough to open a vcard file.

But, how is it possible?

It is because, the file just stores contact details in text format & this file format is not encrypted. That also mean that it is less secured & anybody can read this file if You share it over the internet.

vCard file uses electronic business card convention standards to store & transfer contact details between applications.

VCF File Format: Every line in a vCard file in general has 2 parts as given below.

''''''Identifier Part: Data Part
TEL;WORK:
TEL;HOME:
ADR;WORK;PREF:

Each line has a identifier & a value (data) , delimited by a colon ‘:’.

Few of the identifier are. BEGIN, END, EMAIL, ORG, TITLE, N etc.,

If you have a sub category in identifier or data, then it will be delimited by a semi-colon ‘;’. Refer the Wiki page at end of this article to understand the structure of this file in detail.

How Not to Open VCF file?

Consider you have a vCard or VCF file & you want to see the contents in it. Do not double click on it.

If you do, then the file will be opened in MS Outlook app by default. In most Windows systems, Microsoft Outlook is the default app to open a vcf contact file.

Outlook will display only the first contact even if the vCard file has more than one contact. Since it is designed with the consideration that a vcf file can have only one contact.

Outlook import/export might be the good option.

Whereas, in most Smart phones, a single vCard file can have multiple contact information. I hope you like these tricks on how to open vcf file online in this page. Please leave a comment on what you think that would help me in revising this article.

Good Reading: Refer this Wiki page to know format or structure of a vCard file and its various versions.

One thought on “Open VCF File Online – Free VCF Viewers & Editors”

  1. This was great- I’m a Mac user, and I think MS Outlook is the worst- is there anything I should know if I’m doing this on a Mac? Great blog, by the way- just found it this morning and it’s a wonderful read over my morning coffee- I’ll definitely be back!

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