CSV to vCard

Step 1 (Paste Data) Step 2 (Specify Types) Step 3 (Copy vCard)

This simple JS conversion takes CSV (or tab-delimited) contacts and turns them into vCard format. This was originally written to take information from Outlook Express for Mac OS 9 and bring it into the address book in OS X.

To begin, export your contact information to a text file, open that file in the text editor of your choice, copy the information to the clipboard, and paste it in the box below. Then click on the 2nd tab above.

(For this to work properly, the first line must have the names of the items being exported.)

Please select the type of data for each field being imported. If no appropriate entry exists, please choose "(ignore)" from the top of the list.

I have attempted to guess the correct type for each field, but due to a bug in IE 5.1 for Mac, many guesses listed below may show "(ignore)" in black, when the acutal data type chosen is correct. If you can trust my guesses, you don't need to adjust any of the items which say "(ignore)" in black.

When done, click on the 3rd tab above.


Here you have it! Copy the contents of the box below, paste them into a text editor, and save them to your computer as a text file with an extension of '.vcf' (e.g. 'mycontacts.vcf'). You should then be able to import them into the vCard-aware application of your choice (like the Address Book in OS X, by dragging the file into the Address Book).

If all doesn't go well for you, please let me know and I'll see if there's something I can do about it. This was only tested with data exported from Outlook Express and importing the vCard into my Address Book. There are certainly fields which the vCard format supports which I haven't accounted for here...if you need them, it's not that hard for me to add them.