Overview

vCardIO is a utility to import/export contacts from/to a vCard (vcf) file on the sdcard. The vCard parser is based on Funambol code.

The currently supported vCard version is 2.1 (for both import and export). Currently supported fields are phones, contact methods, organizations, notes and photos (birthdays are also partially supported by translating them to a note). vCardIO does not sync contact data, however it can remember previously exported or imported contacts and either completely replace them or ignore them on import.

Usage

To export contacts

The name of the file to which contacts will be exported is in the text field next to the Export to button (the default is /sdcard/backup.vcf). Edit the filename if necessary, then press the Export to button. The application may take a long time if there are many contacts.

In the latest version, pressing the "Selected Contacts" option will show a list from which you can select specific contact groups. Only contacts from the selected contact groups will be exported (if you want to export all contacts, you can check "export all contacts" and this list will be ignored).

To import contacts

The name of the file from which contacts will be imported is in the text field next to the Import from button (the default is /sdcard/contacts.vcf). Edit the filename if necessary, then press the Import from button. The application may take a long time if there are many contacts.

In the latest version, pressing the "Selected Contacts" option will show a list from which you can select specific contact groups. Imported contacts will be added to these groups only. By default, the only selected group is the "My Contacts" group (usually called "Contacts"). Make sure that at least one contact group is selected (otherwise, you may not be able to see the imported contacts in the Contacts app). Note that these settings affect contacts received from SMS as well.

In the contact-group selection list, pressing the menu button will give an option to add new contact groups and delete existing ones (only empty groups can be deleted).

vCardIO uses the X-IRMC-LUID vCard field as a unique ID for contacts (it keeps a database mapping this id to the phone's internal contact id). By default, import will not replace or re-add contacts whose ID already appears in the database (to prevent contacts from appearing multiple times). If Replace existing contacts is checked, import will completely replace phone and contact method information for existing contacts.

Known Issues

The code has not been extensively tested. It's worked for me, and hasn't done anything bad so far. However, it's recommended that you backup your contacts database before playing with it.

One known issue is that no attempt is made to identify duplicates on an initial import. In particular, importing multiple times from a vcf file generated by some other program that doesn't use the X-IRMC-LUID vCard field for unique IDs will cause contacts to appear multiple times (importing from a vcf file generated by vCardIO should be safe).

Before filing a bug report for import problems, please verify that the vCards you are attempting to import are version 2.1 and not 3.0, which is currently unsupported by vCardIO. In particular, it appears that the default vCard export version for GMail and kaddressbook is 3.0 (kaddressbook seems to export a version 3.0 card even when explicitly set to 2.1).

New!

• Version 0.32 is a bugfix release (fixing issue 45). Please test and report any problems.

• Version 0.31 is a bugfix release (fixing issues 36, 40 and 46). Please test and report any problems. Note that name prefixes and suffixes are not fully supported: vCardIO will read them correctly, but when exporting the first word of the name will always be treated as the given name, the last word as the surname and addtional words as additional names.

• Starting at version 0.27, vCardio has a revamped user interface, including support for a file chooser dialog (when the OI File Manager is installed).

• Starting at version 0.23, vCardIO supports import/export to and from specific contact groups.

• Courtesy of francisdb, the latest version of vCardIO supports receiving Contacts by SMS: when this is enabled (it's off by default), vCards received as SMS will now give an option to import them.

Please submit any bugs or issues you find.