Outlook Contacts to VCF — From an Outlook CSV Export to a vCard File

Export contacts from Outlook as CSV

Outlook's bulk export is a spreadsheet, not a vCard. The click-path depends on which Outlook you have. These are the paths Microsoft documents; as of 2026 — menus move, so treat the labels as a search hint if your build looks different.

Classic Outlook for Windows(the desktop app with File on the ribbon): File → Open & Export → Import/Export → Export to a file → Comma Separated Values → pick the Contacts folder → choose a save location. That is the CSV this page is built for. As of 2026 — menus move.

New Outlook and Outlook.com: open People, then Manage → Export contacts, and download the CSV. The web export is the same family of column names (First Name, E-mail Address, Mobile Phone, Home Street…) so the mapper below applies. As of 2026 — menus move.

Outlook for Mac does not offer a CSV export of Contacts. What you get instead is an .olm data file, or you can drag individual contacts to the desktop as separate .vcf files — still one card at a time, not a list. If you need a CSV from a Mac, sign in at Outlook.com / Outlook on the web and use People → Manage → Export contacts there. As of 2026 — menus move.

Which Outlook columns map automatically

Headers are lowercased and stripped of punctuation, then matched against HEADER_RULES in lib/mapping.js. These Outlook names match, on their own:

• Names: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name
• Email: E-mail Address → Email. E-mail 2 Address and E-mail 3 Address do not auto-map — assign them in Step 2 to Email or Email (2nd).
• Phones: Mobile Phone; Business Phone, Business Phone 2, Company Main Phone → Work phone; Home Phone, Home Phone 2 → Home phone; Other Phone, Primary Phone → Phone (main)
• Org: Company → Company / Organization; Job Title → Job title (see the Title caveat below)
• Address: Home Street / Business Street → Street; Home City / Business City → City; Home State / Business State → State; Home Postal Code / Business Postal Code → ZIP; Home Country/Region / Business Country/Region → Country
• Other: Web Page → Website; Notes → Notes

Two Outlook quirks matter in a full export, because name, company, title and each address part are single-use — the first matching column wins, later ones fall to Ignore. Classic Outlook lists a Title column (Mr / Ms / Dr) beforeJob Title. Title matches the job-title rule, so Job Title is then ignored. Remap Job Title by hand and set Title to Ignore unless you really want "Mr" as the job title. The same first-match rule applies to addresses: Business Street / City / State / Postal Code / Country/Region come before the Home* equivalents in a typical Outlook CSV, so the business block maps and Home Street, Home City, Home State, Home Postal Code and Home Country/Region land in Ignore. Flip them in Step 2 if the home address is the one you want.

Columns that stay on Ignore, and that you can map by hand or leave: Categories, Birthday, Anniversary, Suffix, Nickname, Department, Office Location, faxes, Car Phone, Pager, IM Address, E-mail Display Name, Home Street 2 / Business Street 2, Spouse, Gender, User 1–4. Outlook's Location header auto-maps to Address (full) — that field is often an office-location string, not a postal address, so set it to Ignore if it is noise.

Accents and the ANSI export

Classic Outlook for Windows writes CSV in the system ANSI code page — typically Windows-1252on a Western European or US machine — unless a newer Microsoft 365 build offers an explicit UTF-8 choice. The file usually has no byte-order mark, so nothing in the first bytes tells a reader "this is not UTF-8".

This converter accepts .csv, .txt, .tsv, .xlsx, .xls and .json. A CSV is read with file.text() in the browser, which always decodes as UTF-8. A UTF-8 export, with or without a BOM, keeps accents: José stays José (the BOM is stripped by the UTF-8 decoder). A Windows-1252 export does not get transcoded. The single byte 0xE9 that Windows-1252 uses for é is invalid UTF-8, so it becomes a replacement character — José lands as Jos�. The converter does not sniff ANSI and does not fall back to Windows-1252.

If preview names look like that, the mapping is fine and the encoding is not. Re-save the file as UTF-8 (Notepad → Save As → Encoding: UTF-8, or Excel → Save As → CSV UTF-8) and drop it again. Exporting from Outlook.com / new Outlook is the other way out: that CSV is more often already UTF-8. Once the text is Unicode, vCard 3.0 output from this page writes UTF-8, which iPhone, Android and Google Contacts import without mojibake.

One .vcf for the whole list vs one per contact

Under Output the converter has two options. The default is a single .vcf with every contact as a BEGIN:VCARD…END:VCARD block inside it. That is what iPhone / iCloud, Android / Google Contacts, Thunderbird and Apple Contacts want for a bulk import — one file, many cards.

Choose Zip of one .vcf per contact when a CRM, an email-signature tool or a document workflow wants an individual file named after each person. You get a zip archive, not a folder of loose files. Phones will not import a zip of vCards in one tap; unzipping and picking files one by one is worse than the single-file option. If you are moving Outlook → phone, leave Output on the single .vcf.

Importing the .vcf

iPhone: on a computer, sign in at iCloud.com → Contacts → Import vCard, and select the .vcf. The cards sync down to the phone once iCloud Contacts is on. Full click-path, duplicate handling and on-device alternatives (Mail, Files, AirDrop) are on the iPhone import guide. Use vCard 3.0 — iCloud's web importer is picky about 2.1 and 4.0.

Android:the reliable bulk route is Google Contacts on the web → Import → pick the .vcf, then let the account sync to the phone. Samsung and Pixel also import a .vcf from the Contacts app (Manage contacts / Fix & manage). Details, account-filter gotchas and duplicate merge: Android import guide.

Thunderbird: Address Book → Import → vCard file (.vcf). Apple Mail / Mac: Mail itself does not import an address book; double-click the .vcf (or File → Import in Contacts.app) and Mail reads the same Contacts database. To go the other way — a .vcf back to a spreadsheet — use VCF to CSV.

Outlook Contacts to VCF — FAQ

• Does Outlook export vCard (.vcf) in bulk?

  Not for the whole Contacts folder. Classic Outlook for Windows will save or drag out one contact as a .vcf at a time; there is no 'Export the folder as vCard' in that UI. New Outlook and Outlook.com export a CSV from People, not a multi-contact .vcf. That is why this page exists: export CSV (the format Outlook will actually give you in bulk), convert it here, import one .vcf into a phone or another mail app.

• Which vCard version should I pick if I am importing back into Outlook — 2.1 or 3.0?

  If the destination is a phone, iCloud or Google Contacts, leave 3.0 selected — that is the safe default everywhere else on this site. If the .vcf is going back into classic Outlook for Windows, 2.1 is the version Outlook has historically imported most reliably; 3.0 often works on newer Microsoft 365 builds. Avoid 4.0 for Outlook: older builds are known to reject it. We have not re-tested every Outlook version here.

• Accented names came out as � or garbage. What happened?

  Classic Outlook writes CSV in the Windows ANSI code page (usually Windows-1252) unless a newer build lets you pick UTF-8. This converter reads a .csv with file.text(), which always decodes as UTF-8. A UTF-8 file — with or without a BOM — keeps José as José. A Windows-1252 file turns the 0xE9 byte for é into a replacement character (�). Re-save the CSV as UTF-8 (Notepad → Save As → UTF-8, or Excel → CSV UTF-8) and drop it again; or export from Outlook.com, which is more likely to already be UTF-8.

• What about Outlook distribution lists / contact groups?

  They are not in the CSV. Exporting the Contacts folder as Comma Separated Values writes people (and the columns listed on this page). Distribution lists, contact groups and their membership are a different Outlook item type and do not appear as rows. Recreate the groups at the destination after the people have imported.

• Will contact photos survive the conversion?

  No. Outlook's CSV export has no photo column, and this converter does not invent PHOTO lines. The .vcf will have names, phones, emails, company, address, website and notes — whatever mapped from the spreadsheet — but not the pictures stored on the Outlook contact records. Re-add photos at the destination if you need them.

• Is the CSV from Outlook.com the same as classic Outlook for Windows?

  Close enough for this mapper: First Name, Last Name, E-mail Address, Mobile Phone, Company and the Home/Business address headers are the same family of names, so the auto-map on this page applies to both. The click-path is different (People → Manage → Export contacts on the web / new Outlook; File → Open & Export on classic). Encoding is the practical difference: Outlook.com is more often UTF-8; classic Windows Outlook is more often ANSI. Menus as of 2026 — they move.

• Is my Outlook contact list uploaded to a server?

  No. The CSV is parsed with JavaScript in this tab (PapaParse, then the same column mapper as the rest of the site). There is no upload endpoint. After the page has loaded you can disconnect from the internet, drop the file, preview the cards and download a .vcf. Nothing in the converter posts your contacts anywhere.