Importing CSV Contacts into Android through VCard 3.0

Introduction:
I am very happy writing this post since I just solved a problem which occupied me for a week after I bought a new phone. Finally, I am shifting from Nokia OS to Android. Nokia was a great company. I didn’t have any bugs or unsolvable problems with my Nokia devices when Nokia was alive. However my new Android phone made me frustrated while importing contacts.

Problem:
I got my contacts from Nokia in both CSV and VCard 2.1 format with old Nokia PC Suite 7.1 and new Nokia Suite 3.8 which are hard to find on internet. Anyway, VCard 2.1 format doesn’t have support for Unicode characters. So, I had problems in importing those VCF files into my Android phone. I also lost some of my fields which VCard 2.1 doesn’t support.

Windows Contacts has the ability to convert CSV into VCF with source and target fields matching option. Using it was frustrating because my contacts folder didn’t have Import button. I had to enable its folder customization with following key and set folder type to Contacts.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FolderDescriptions\{56784854-C6CB-462B-8169-88E350ACB882}\PropertyBag]
"NoCustomize"=dword:00000000

Then I had to deal with same file name problem. When Windows contacts automatically recognizes “Name” field, VCF file names will consist of only the name of the person and with high probability name collusion will occur.

Then I had to merge those VCF files with a .bat file having this code.

copy *.vcf !all.vcf

All of these efforts resulted in failures.

My best chance was downloading and using “CSV to vCard” by www.csvtovcard.com. This software has the ability to match source fields/columns of CSV file with VCard fields. It also supports VCard 3.0 format and UTF-8 encoding. However this tool didn’t solve all of my problems. I couldn’t import some of the VCF files that this tool generated. Besides I don’t want to be stuck with only available fields. There weren’t field for notes and second mobile phone.

In summary, my problem was importing my contacts from CSV format into Android phone through VCard files with UTF-8 support and without losing any fields or data.

Solution:
Finally, I made up an Excel file that generates VCard codes that

• Has UTF-8 support so that Turkish characters are displayed correctly
• Has support for second mobile and note fields
• Can be imported in Android

You can download this Excel file from the end of this post. Now I will explain the process.

It is easy to convert CSV files to Excel. Just note that importing phone numbers as with format other than “text” will delete leading zeros which will cause you much trouble. So, all the imported columns should be on “text” format. Check your data for any errors. Any cell shouldn’t have new line or semicolon (;) characters. I am not sure whether it is necessary but filter phone numbers from any problematic character like #, +, -.

Paste your data into my Excel workbook into correct columns. Then it will give you VCard codes instantly. Copy all cells containing codes and paste into Notepad++. Replace tab characters with new line characters (replace \t with \r\n). Save this text file with .vcf extension. Send this VCF file to your phone via Bluetooth.

When you try to open this file on your Android phone, it will ask you whether you want to import it or not. Approve importing. Then you should be able to reach your contacts in Android.

Further Details:
1) My excel file supports only the fields that I need. However, you can develop this file. In your phone Contacts app, add a new dummy contact with all fields are filled with data preferably containing Unicode characters. Export this dummy contact as VCF. Send it to your laptop via Bluetooth. Open that VCF file with Notepad++. Now you can see codes for additional fields. You can update Excel file so that it generates those additional field codes.

2) When I imported VCF file in my Android phone, I saw that phone numbers (with only few exceptions) had wrong format. Android had put dashes/hyphens in wrong places so that it was difficult to read numbers. I found an app on Google Play named “Twitch! Contacts Formatter”. This app corrected my phone number formats. If you have any doubts about privacy, you can run it after disabling internet access or limiting data connection.

3) After installing WhatsApp, my contacts get doubled, each contact appearing twice. When I erased all WhatsApp data and reconfigured WhatsApp, more contacts are added. It is unexplainable, boring, frustrating, neglected bug which some Xiaomi users share. One way to skip this bug is to import contacts only after WhatsApp installation and first configuration.

VCF Generator.xlsx Download