My phone won’t import the VCF file created from Excel what’s wrong?

[williamturner]

Hi everybody,

I converted my Excel contacts to VCF, but my phone shows an error when I try to import the file. The message says, “Invalid vCard format.” I used an online Excel to VCF Converter, and the file opens in Notepad just fine, but the contacts don’t load on my Android device. I’m confused because the VCF file contains the name, number, and email for each contact. Is there something about vCard versions that phones don’t support? I mostly want to Convert Excel to VCF for quick phone import, but it fails every time. Does anyone know what formatting issues or version mismatches cause this?

[teneg]

Hello,

Android​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ tools are typically very selective about the vCard version with which they are compatible. Most online tools export to older versions such as 2.1 or 3.0 while some phones may require 4.0. If the version is different, the import will not work. Also check:

The phone numbers should not carry the symbols like “/” or the extra spaces.

Do not put multiple emails in one field.

UTF-8 encoding has to be used.

The file must not have any unsupported custom fields.

Tools that make clean structures, like WholeClear Excel to vCard Converter, give the users an option to select the vCard version so that the output is compatible with most phones. Even a simple XLSX to VCF converter utility would be fine if the file contained only basic characters and the correct ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌version.