Backup All Outlook Contacts to VCard in 3 Easy Steps

If you have a phone that can’t be syncronised with your outlook contacts or you just don’t want to bother with the installation, you can send this email to the phone and click on the atachment. The phone will ask you if you want to add this contact to the address book. Since there are many VCF files it’s probably better to join them into single VCF file before sending. Just follow the 3 steps above and then open DOS window in that directory and type this command:
copy *.vcf contacts.vcf
Copy command will join every VCF file into a single file called contacts.vcf.
When I tried this on some sony Ericsson phones, the phone filled the whole address book with one click.

Works with Outlook 2007 too.

The easiest way to do this is to download Mozilla Thundebird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/) and install it on your Vista OS. you don’t need to set up any account. once you have installed it. open up the address book and then select all the address’s and choose export. Select the LDIF format. Once this is done, copy this on a USB file and move the .LDIF file to your Mac. Now open up ‘Address Book’ within Mac and choose ‘import’ and navigate to the .ldif file and BAAMMM!! you are done. you should have all of your contacts in your Mac address book.
Now if you have an iPhone and MobileMe, enable syncing and make sure you have your address book option checked. doing this will add all of your contacts to your iPhone as well.

really good n greate information. Thanks

In Outlook 2007, this method will allow you to export the vCards with multiple email addresses.

In Outlook 2007 it doesn’t work. I can’t access the ‘Save as’ option. When I select all I can only press send message. I’ve saved them in a group as vcards but don’t know how to transfer to my moto milestone. Thanks for help

This was very helpful. Thanks for sharing this.

The described way has a problem. Not all Fields are exported, e.g. the notes field. So this is more for sharing purposes, than for backuping.

Sweet, that copy command was just what I needed.

Thanks!!

Micah

hi..
i have one my contact backup file in onenote2007 and i want to copy this my contacts in outlook 2007 in contact bussiness card thane wht should i do????????????

I just wanna say a BIG Thanks to you
Importing my contacts from my old cellphone to my new android one was a nightmare for me.
Thank you Thank you Thank you

On OL2007 – If you want to transfer all your contacts to an Android based phone. Pl follow these simple steps.
1. Make a new folder call it anything you want on the desktop. ( example New folder)
2. In outlook go to contacts and select all your contacts by pressing Ctrl A ( this will higlight all of your contacts )
3. Simply drag the higlighted area into your “new folder”
This wil NOT move your original contacts from your Outlook2007
All your contacts are now stored in the “new folder” in a Vcard/vcf format.
Copy this folder on to your Micro SD card in your phone.
On your android device select appropriate selection to read all your Vcard/Vcf files.

If someone want to convert contacts backup in vcf format lotus notes client can export contact in vcf format.

I end up with .msg files following all the options described. I have OL2010 (it is a company computer that works with exchange server). Any ideas how to do end up with vcf files?

I am ousing OL2007 and coupel of points
- as someone mentioned the File ? save attachments options does not work in OL2007
- if you drag the contacts directly from Outlook, the extension turns to .msg. Not sure how Peter managed it
- The exporting to message option works. But I am unable to drag all the files out at once to any other folder on the desktop.you have to drag each vcf individually. If you select all and drag, only the first one gets copied. Can someone help please? i have 1500 contacts and dragging individually is not the solution

Carl, looking forward to a response from you. tried to also contact you but could not locate an email address. Thanks

On OL2010, if you select all the contacts, instead of right-clicking on them to forward (right-click does not give options under “forward”), look at the top bar and click on “Forward Contact”. There it actually gives you the option to forward as business card. They will now appear in vcf format within the mail message.

This is what I call the power of right tool at the right time. Carl, even after 3 years of your posting, people are finding it helpful in resolving their mobile issues today… Thanks! It helped me a lot!

Sorry. I am notgetting it. My Outlook 2007 allows me to select ‘Contacts’ and display the indexed book. But I see no way to select (Ctrl-A) all the contacts and do not have a ‘Forward as vCard’ item on the Action menu.

Worked great. In Outlook 2007 you need to go to Actions / Send Full Contact/ In Internet Format vCard/

I don’t know why my Outlook 2007 is different from others, but I do not have a ‘Send Full Contact’ in my Actions menu.

Thanks Joe — Stupid to not have thought og that. Works as advertised. In conjunction with ‘Select All’ off the Edit menu, gives me an email with a set of vcf files (one for every contact in the book). And DOS *.vcf contacts.vcf gives me exactly what I was looking for — a sigle file that I could import into another application. Wish MS would accept the standard and play along with the rest of the world.

Need to get my OL2007 contacts into my iPad. Have created a single vcf and have it as a mail attachment. Not sure how to import into my iPad now, pls advise.

I too have the same problem, unable to drag-n-drop all the .vcf files to folder. No Save attachments options as well. I got around the problem by sending the email to myself on the desktop & then “save attachments” option is available to save all the files in *.vcf format

This worked for me on OL2007. I simply opened contacts; selected all contacts; right clicked; selected send as business card. It takes some time depending on the number of contacts you have. Then it will open a new mail message with all your contacts as attachments in .vcf format simply copy and paste them from the attachments to your hhd. Hope it both works for you and helps. Take care.

If you have a laptop with bluetooth then easiest way to transfer the contacts is, Select All contacts in Outlook by using Ctrl+A. Click on Sent to Bluetooth under File Menu. It is time consuming but for my Android phone it worked like an charm. When i have transferred contacts through bluetooth on my phone. It directly got reflected in my contacts.

hey. ya’ll helped alot! these posts were heaps helpful. though i have a problem now. i did all MinaM told me to do for outlook 2010. and used DOS to convert to a single vcf file, but when i transferred that single vcf file to my samsung galaxy s3 and imported it from sd card it only came up with the last contact in the vct file. when i opened the file on my laptop, it also only showed the last contact beginning with Z.
what do i do?

I just tried it and it really helped me! At work, we’re currently using Outlook 2003 and will get our upgrades this month. So now was searching for a way of exporting my contacts and to create a back-up for my private files, which I also wanted to sync with my phone.

I did this with the DOS method which worked great for me! combined all the files to one for my phone and kept the single files for my outlook 2010 at home

Thanks for this great post!!!!!

Thanks a bunch, for office 2010 the functionality is found on the ribbon. Excellent!

Great!! Worked for me on OL2010!! Thanks a lot!

Nice. Issue resolved. Contacts very easily copied to cell….

For Outlook2003: forward/save-VCF as Business cards (without notes) is not enough. But the above hints did allow me to figure out a technique to save as .VCF WITH NOTES, for 800+ cards which

0. create a new blank message
1. on ribbon, pick tab “Insert” /”attach item”
2. Radio-button “Insert as” attachment
3. in tree “Look in” : pick “Contacts”
4. in list “Items” : select all individual contact rows
5. press “OK”
6. A possibly-large blank-body e-mail will have your contacts as attachments as full-VCF. Cut-and-paste in large groups to your selected hard drive directory.

7. then as described above “open DOS window in that directory and type this command:
copy *.vcf contacts.vcf

8. FINALLY: Curse MS and this moronic ribbon concept.

very great advice, worked like a charm, Thanks
and I must say that some of the websites I have visited for this issue, there answers was insulting to ones inelegance

This is an important post. It solves the problem of exporting outlook contacts to vcf, and then, to load the contacts in a Smartphone. Thanks!

I am trying to transfer contacts from SonyEricson to iPhone.
I got all the contacts in a single vcf file via Bluetooth.
iCloud did not accepted the file.

loaded the file in WindowsAddressBook and then got them in outlook and eventually as a VCF by “Forward as a Business Card” and extracting from email

the problem is iCloud is not accepting the vcf file, neither individual nor the combined file

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i hav got the contacts in my iPhone via the exchange account but i want them to be transferred to iCloud

Great!!!!!! Also people can automate the vCards import export process through vCard Magic ( http://www.vcardmagic.com/ ) application.