vCard (.vcf) File Parser & Inspector
File
vCard is the RFC 6350 contact exchange format that every phone, mail client, and address book speaks — when you export contacts from iCloud, Google Contacts, Outlook, or Android, you almost always get a .vcf file. This tool parses vCard 2.1, 3.0, and 4.0 inputs (the three versions in real use), unfolds the RFC 5545-style line continuations, decodes quoted-printable, splits the structured N and ADR fields into their five and seven sub-components, recognizes the TYPE parameter for phone/email/address kinds, and renders inline base64 PHOTO data as actual images. Everything is parsed locally in your browser — your address book never reaches a server. Useful for sanity-checking an export before importing into a different system, extracting a single contact from a big merged dump, or just inspecting a file from someone before opening it on your phone.
How to use
- Drop a .vcf file onto the upload area, click to choose one, or paste the raw vCard text into the box below.
- Every contact between BEGIN:VCARD / END:VCARD becomes its own card with name, org, phones, emails, addresses, URLs, birthday, notes, and a photo if present.
- Click 'Load sample' to see two example contacts (Marie Curie + Alan Turing) demonstrating both vCard 3.0 and 4.0 syntax.
- Edit the text area to fix or experiment — every change re-parses instantly.
Frequently asked questions
- Which vCard versions are supported?
- 2.1, 3.0, and 4.0 — the three versions in any kind of real use. 4.0 is the current RFC 6350 standard, 3.0 (RFC 2426) is what most older mail clients and iOS used until very recently, 2.1 is what some Android phones still emit by default. The parser is permissive: it handles unfolding (continuation lines starting with space or tab), TYPE= and bare-type parameters (e.g. TEL;CELL: vs TEL;TYPE=CELL:), quoted-printable encoding, and inline base64 PHOTOs.
- Is my contact data uploaded anywhere?
- No. The file is read with the browser's FileReader API and parsed by local JavaScript. Nothing — names, phone numbers, photos, nothing — ever leaves your tab. You can safely drop sensitive contact exports here.
- Why does the N field have five parts?
- RFC 6350 splits the structured name into family ; given ; additional (middle) ; honorific prefix ; honorific suffix — so 'Dr. Marie Sklodowska Curie Sr.' becomes N:Curie;Marie;Sklodowska;Dr.;Sr.. The FN (formatted name) is a single free-text version meant for display; ideally a vCard provides both, but many real-world exports only set one of them.
- What if the photo is huge?
- Inline base64 photos can be hundreds of kilobytes — that's normal. They're rendered as 48-pixel thumbnails in the card view. The parser doesn't try to recompress; if you need smaller files, use a vCard editor or strip the PHOTO line before importing into a constrained system.
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