What a VCF file is
A .vcf file is defined by IETF RFC 6350 (vCard 4.0 specification).
It stores contacts as plain text — the format nearly every phone, mail client and
address book uses to export and share contacts. Each contact sits between a BEGIN:VCARD line
and an END:VCARD line, and one file can hold a single contact or an entire phone book of
them.
Inside, every detail is a property on its own line: FN for the full name, N
for the structured name, EMAIL, TEL, ADR for the postal address,
ORG, TITLE, URL, BDAY and PHOTO. Most
properties carry a type, such as TEL;TYPE=cell or EMAIL;TYPE=work. Opening the
file in a text editor shows all of this raw — folded lines, base64 photos and escaped punctuation
— which is why people look for a viewer.
How to open a VCF file
- Open the contact file. Drop the .vcf onto the box above, or click to browse. The file is read from your disk by the browser; no copy is sent anywhere, which matters because a contact export is personal data.
- Read the contacts. Every contact is listed as a card with its name, job title, organisation, emails, phone numbers, postal address, websites and photo. A single export can hold hundreds; all of them are parsed.
- Export to CSV. Download CSV writes one row per contact with separate columns for name, emails, phones, addresses and notes — ready to open in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, or to import into another address book.
- Or copy the list. Copy all contacts puts a clean plain-text version on your clipboard, and Save as .txt writes the same thing to a file.
What comes out
- The full name from
FN, falling back to the structuredNfield when a formatted name is missing. - Every email address and phone number, each labelled with its type — work, home, cell — where the card records one.
- Organisation and job title, and the postal address flattened to a single readable line.
- Websites, birthday and notes.
- The contact photo, decoded from its base64 and shown as a thumbnail.
- A CSV export with one row per contact and separate columns, plus a plain-text copy of the whole set.
Values escaped in the vCard — \, for a comma, \n for a line break
— are unescaped, so an address or note reads normally rather than showing the backslashes.
What is supported, and what is not
Versions: vCard 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 are all read. They differ in ways that routinely
break naive parsers, and each is handled here. Version 2.1 wraps any value containing non-ASCII bytes in
QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoding, which is decoded, including the soft line breaks where a trailing
= joins two lines. Version 3.0 and 4.0 use UTF-8 directly.
Folding is undone first. The specification splits any line longer than 75 characters across several physical lines, each continuation beginning with a single space or tab; that leading whitespace is removed and the value rejoined before anything else happens, because splitting on newlines alone corrupts long notes, addresses and every base64 photo.
Grouped properties such as item1.EMAIL, written by Apple Contacts, have
their group prefix stripped so the property is recognised. Type parameters in both the
modern TYPE=work form and the bare vCard 2.1 ;WORK;VOICE form are read.
Not decoded: a photo stored as a remote http URL rather than embedded
data is deliberately not fetched — fetching it would send a request off your device, which is the
opposite of the point. Encrypted or signed vCards are read as far as their plain properties allow.
Why the contacts are never uploaded
The file is read from your disk and parsed inside your browser. No server takes part, so your contacts never leave your device.
This matters more for a contact list than for almost any other file. A phone-book export is a dense block of other people's personal data — names, private phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses — and handing it to an online converter means handing all of it to whoever runs that converter. Under the GDPR that is a disclosure you are responsible for. Extracting locally means there is nothing to disclose. For the full explanation of how browser-based processing works, see the security page.
What this tool does not do
This is a reader and a converter, not an address book. Four boundaries:
- It does not edit or save vCards. It reads them and exports CSV or text; it does not write a modified .vcf back.
- It does not de-duplicate contacts. If an export contains the same person twice, both appear.
- It does not fetch remote photos. A photo referenced by URL is left alone so no request leaves your device; only photos embedded in the file are shown.
- It does not sync anywhere. There is no account and no connection to Google, iCloud or Outlook — the CSV is yours to import wherever you choose.
Why people open VCF files
- A .vcf will not open — someone shared a contact and the computer has nothing associated with the file.
- Moving contacts to a spreadsheet — turning a phone export into a CSV to clean up, mail-merge or bulk-edit.
- Switching address books — getting contacts out of one service in a format another can import.
- Checking an export worked — confirming a backup actually contains everyone before wiping a phone.
- Reading a shared contact — seeing the details of a vCard attached to an email without importing it.
VCF compared with CSV and other contact exports
A .vcf is the portable standard almost every device writes, one contact per card as plain text. A .csv is a spreadsheet of contacts with a header row, easier to bulk-edit but with no agreed column names, so importing one often means mapping fields by hand. This tool bridges the two: it reads the standard vCard and gives you the spreadsheet.
If your contact arrived as an attachment on an Outlook message, open it with the MSG viewer; on a plain email, use the EML viewer. To pull just the email addresses out of a contact list you have as text, use the email and URL extractor. To read the columns of a CSV export, use the CSV column extractor.
Frequently asked questions
How do I open a VCF file?
Drop it onto this page. Every contact is shown with its name, emails, phone numbers, address and photo, and can be exported to CSV. No app and no account are needed.
How do I convert a VCF to CSV?
Open the .vcf here and click Download CSV. Each contact becomes one row, with separate columns for name, emails, phones, addresses, websites and notes, ready for Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers.
Can it open a file with hundreds of contacts?
Yes. A whole phone-book export in one .vcf is parsed in full and exported in full. The on-page list shows the first 500 contacts for speed; the CSV and copy contain every one.
Are my contacts uploaded to a server?
No. The file is read from your disk and parsed inside your browser. Nothing is transmitted, which is exactly what a list of other people's personal details needs.
Which vCard versions are supported?
vCard 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0. Version 2.1's QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoding for accented characters is decoded, and the folded long lines every version uses are rejoined before parsing.
Why are accented names or notes showing strange characters elsewhere?
Usually a vCard 2.1 file whose values are quoted-printable encoded, opened by a tool that does not decode them. This viewer decodes quoted-printable and detects the text encoding, so names read correctly.
Does it show contact photos?
Yes, when the photo is embedded in the file as base64 it is decoded and shown as a thumbnail. A photo stored as a web link is not fetched, so nothing leaves your device.
Can I edit the contacts here?
No. This is a viewer and converter. It reads the vCard and exports CSV or text; edit the contacts in your address book or in the spreadsheet after exporting.