Windows
Double clicking opens the built in People or Contacts app and adds the contacts. To read one first, right click, choose Open with, and pick Notepad, or use the viewer above.
Free VCF Viewer and Converter
View a VCF file and convert it to CSV
Double clicking a .vcf file usually dumps every contact in it straight into your address book. This reads it instead, showing the names, numbers and emails in a plain table so you can look before you decide, then export them as a CSV for Excel or send them to your own contacts. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is added to your address book.
Drop CSV, VCF, or vCard file
or click to browse · CSV, VCF, or vCard up to 5 MB total
Runs on this device
0
contacts in the file
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with a phone number
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with an email
| Name | Job title | Company | Phone | Other |
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No contact in this file matches that search.
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Send these contacts to ConnectMachine
They land in your own account, ready for notes, reminders, duplicate merging and AI search, rather than being tipped into your phone address book all at once.
Or download a file
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Contacts have been imported successfully 🎉
Sign in on the app with
- No upload, no server
- Nothing added to your address book
- Works with wifi switched off
How to open a VCF file on any device
Every platform can open one. The catch is that most of them open it by importing it.
Mac
Double clicking opens Contacts and asks whether to add the cards. Choosing Cancel at that prompt leaves your address book untouched. Quick Look with the space bar shows only the first card.
iPhone
Tap the attachment in Mail and you get a preview with Add All Contacts underneath. A file with hundreds of cards gives you one button and no way to pick.
Android
Open Contacts, then Fix and manage, then Import from file. This imports everything in the file with no preview at all.
Google Contacts on the web
Import accepts a .vcf, and anything that arrives can be undone from Other contacts afterwards, which makes it the most forgiving of the standard routes.
This viewer
Reads the file and shows you what is inside without touching your address book. Look first, then decide.
Converting a VCF to CSV or Excel
Once the file is open above, the CSV download turns it into a spreadsheet.
A VCF stores each contact as a block of labelled lines, which is useful for a phone and useless for anything else. A CSV is a plain table, one row per contact and one column per field, which is what you need for sorting, deduplicating, a mail merge, or a CRM import.
The download gives you named columns for first name, last name, full name, company, job title, every phone number in the file with its label, every email address, address, website, birthday and notes. Contacts missing a field get an empty cell rather than a shifted row, so nothing lands under the wrong heading.
For Excel specifically, the file is written with a UTF-8 byte order mark. That is the detail that stops Excel guessing the encoding and turning Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese or Korean names into strings of symbols. Open it by double clicking and the names will be intact. There is no separate xlsx step needed, since Excel reads CSV natively.
Going the other way, from a spreadsheet to a .vcf, works here too. Drop a CSV in and the format is detected automatically, then choose the .vcf download instead.
What a VCF file is
A VCF file, also called a vCard, is the standard format phones and email clients use to exchange contacts. Inside, each contact is a block of labelled lines holding a name, phone numbers, emails and anything else that was saved. It is plain text, which is why a text editor can open it, though what you see is closer to code than to a contact list.
One file can hold one contact or several thousand. That is the part that catches people out. A single .vcf attachment from a colleague might be one person, or it might be their entire address book.
The version number is the only meaningful variation. Files can be vCard 2.1, 3.0 or 4.0, and 2.1 in particular stores accented and non-Latin characters in a way that many tools fail to decode, which is the usual reason names appear as strings of symbols.
VCF or vCard, is there a difference?
No, they are two names for the same thing. VCF, short for Virtual Contact File, is the file extension. vCard is the name of the format written inside it. You may also see .vcard used as an extension, which is equally valid. So a VCF viewer and a vCard viewer are the same tool, and converting VCF to CSV and vCard to CSV are the same job. This page does either.
Reading a file is not the same as importing it
- The file is read, displayed and converted here. No upload, no server, no copy for us to lose.
- Nothing is added to your phone or your address book by looking at it.
- Turn off your wifi and it still opens. That is the test.
- Nothing is sent to us. If you sign in and choose to import, the contacts go into your own ConnectMachine account, where only you can see them.
Why a VCF file will not open, or opens as gibberish
Three problems account for most of it.
Nothing happens when you double click
No app is registered for the extension. On Windows, right click, choose Open with, and pick Contacts or Notepad. Nothing is wrong with the file.
Names appear as =C3=A9 or a run of symbols
The file is vCard 2.1, which encodes accented and non-Latin characters in a form that plain text editors show literally. The viewer above decodes it, so Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean names display properly.
Only one contact shows up
Some previewers, including Quick Look on Mac, display only the first card in a multi-contact file. The rest are there, they are simply not being shown.
Once you have looked, what to do with them
Reading the file is usually the first half of the job.
If you only wanted to check who was in there, you are done. Close the tab and nothing has changed on your device.
If you want the contacts as a spreadsheet, download the CSV. If you want them on a phone, download the .vcf and import it there.
If you want to keep them properly, import them into your own ConnectMachine account instead of your phone. They arrive ready for notes, reminders and duplicate merging, and the app connects to Zapier, so new contacts can reach Salesforce, Airtable or Slack without another export.
Frequently asked questions
How do I open a VCF file without importing the contacts?
Drop it into the viewer above. It reads the file and shows you what is inside without touching your address book. The usual routes, double clicking on Windows or Mac or tapping the attachment on a phone, all open the file by offering to import it.
How do I convert a VCF file to CSV?
Open the file above, then choose the CSV download. Every contact becomes a row with named columns for phone numbers, emails, company and the rest. No account is needed and the file never leaves your device.
Can I open a VCF file in Excel?
Not directly, since Excel does not understand the format. Download the CSV from here and open that instead. It carries a UTF-8 byte order mark so Excel reads the names correctly rather than guessing the encoding, and there is no separate xlsx conversion needed.
Is it safe to open my contacts file here?
Yes, because the file is never sent anywhere. It is read by your browser using JavaScript on the page. There is no upload, no server-side processing, and no copy of your file for us to store or lose. You can disconnect from the internet and it still works.
How many contacts can it handle?
Files up to 5 MB, which is tens of thousands of contacts in a text-only export. Since the work happens on your own machine rather than in a queue, several thousand contacts open in a second or two and the search box filters them as you type. A .vcf carrying embedded photos hits the cap sooner, because the photos are most of the file, so split that one and open each part.
Why are the names showing as strange symbols?
The file is almost certainly vCard 2.1, an older export format that encodes accented and non-Latin characters in a way plain text editors display literally. This viewer decodes it, so those names appear correctly here even if they looked broken elsewhere.
Can I go the other way, from a spreadsheet to a VCF?
Yes. Drop a CSV in and the format is detected automatically, then choose the .vcf download. Your column names are matched for you, so Company and Organization both work, as do Mobile, Cell and Phone.
What is the difference between VCF and vCard?
There is none, they are two names for the same thing. VCF, short for Virtual Contact File, is the file extension, and vCard is the name of the format inside it.
Where do the contacts go if I import them?
Into your own ConnectMachine account, the same place your contacts already live, visible only to you. They are not shared with us to look at, added to any directory, or mixed in with anyone else’s. Importing is entirely optional: reading the file and downloading it need no account at all.
Does dropping a file here count as uploading it?
No. Dragging a file into a web page hands it to the browser on your own computer, which is not the same as sending it to a server. Nothing is transmitted, which is why this page keeps working with your internet switched off.
Are the contact photos shown?
No. Photos are skipped, along with any other binary data in the file. Everything textual is read and displayed.
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