How I Import VCF to Office 365? Explained Step-by-Step

So you want to import VCF to Office 365 but dont know where to start. I understand your situation and have experienced the same frustration firsthand.

This happens because the primary means of accessing the Office 365 account (web portal, mobile, app, or new desktop client) lacks any support for adding contacts that have a .vcf extension.

In desperation, you try to drag and drop the VCF into the Office 365 portal, only for some weird blank screen to show up. Or add these files as an attachment.

You need not waste any more time exploring here in this guide; you will see exactly what’s possible in a step-by-step manner from my own experience. Before we begin, let us study the reasons for adding the vCard to any cloud environment like Microsoft 365.

Why Import VCF to Office 365 (or Anywhere Else) at All?

vCard files in themselves have little to no use. Yes, they can work as an offline backup.

But that’s it.

No one wants to manually search through thousands of files in an unoptimized folder search every time they want to send a simple email or set up a quick online meeting.

Also Read: How to Hide OneDrive from MacOS Menu Bar?

If you have those contact files in your account, it becomes a lot easier to do day-to-day tasks. Moreover, it is also possible that you are switching systems, and your previous communication tool gave you all of the contact details in VCF format.

So you want to add these to your new Office 365 account.

Another common scenario that creates such a situation is where an employee leaves and someone else takes over their client list.

Apart from these, there are many other practical reasons to put a vCard in the O365 cloud. No matter what your reason might be, the following method worked for me, so use it.

How to Import VCF to Office 365 on Your Own Indirectly?

The majority of the Office 365 platforms, like the Outlook mobile app, the New Desktop Edition, and even the Web app, lack any sort of VCF/vCard support.

On the web/desktop, you can import contacts, but only if the contacts are in a CSV format. So you could use a professional vCard to CSV converter.

One cheat code that you can use is to add these digital contact files to a Gmail account (Google Contacts still supports contacts with a .vcf extension)

Then export the contacts into the Outlook CSV format.

After you have the CSV, upload this onto your Office 365 via the appropriate Outlook client (web or a new Desktop client).

Here are the steps to import VCF to Office 365 that have been converted to CSV:

Open the Outlook Web/New Desktop version > Switch to the People section > Manage Contacts (top toolbar) > Import Contacts

On the Import Contacts window, browse for the VCF(now in CSV format) and Import.

This route is viable when the number of contacts is small or limited. Plus, you need to have an active Google account.  Which means you will have to be ready for problems like “Why does my Gmail automatically sign out?“. At that point, you could manually fill in the contacts yourself,

Moreover, interconversion of file formats (like .vcf to .csv in this case) has a slight chance of introducing corruption within the file. Which can further delay the import of VCF to the Office 365 task.

Add VCF to M365 Account Directly with Outlook Classic Client?

If you want to skip interconversion and want to put the .vcf file directly into your Office 365 account, use the Classic client.

As all Windows machines now come with the New Outlook as default, you must first download the classic client separately and set up your Microsoft 365 account in it.

Once you have done that, follow these steps:

• Step 1. From the Contacts, click on File.
  
• Step 2. Switch to the Open & Export Tab.
  
• Step 3. Click on the Import / Export Button.
  
• Step 4. Select “Import a VCARD (.vcf)” and press “Next >”
  
• Step 5. Browse for your VCF file and click Open.
  

Step 6. Go back to the Contacts section and see if the file you uploaded is there or not.

Note: You can only select one VCF file at a time, so if you have your contacts split, you must combine them into a single VCF; otherwise, repeat Steps 1 through 6 every time you want to import VCF to Office 365.

Currently, the contact files are sitting in a local offline folder, so if you open your Office 365 account on any other platform, you won’t find the new contacts. To make the contacts sync, you must add them to a different folder.

Once all the Files are there, select them and drag & drop them into the folder “Contacts – [email protected]”

Now all your contacts are available on every platform, web, desktop, and mobile.

This works for individual/personal account holders, but what if you are an admin tasked with adding the contacts to every user account? The route we just described is just not practical. Moreover, delegating the work to users themselves is a troubleshooting nightmare. Don’t worry, we have a solution that makes it super easy for admins. Let’s see what it is.

How Admins Can Upload VCF to Every User Account in O365?

I know admins personally and have a clear idea of how difficult it is for them to do bulk imports.

However, all such difficulties diminish to zero once they start to use the SysTools Office 365 Import tool to add data to the M365 account.

Download Tool Purchase

The greatest advantage of this tool is that it can process multiple VCF files simultaneously and map them to the correct user account.

No file conversion, just a simple upload. With the built-in concurrency slider, you can process up to 10 accounts simultaneously.

You dont even need to install any Outlook client, and all of the work can be done from a single machine with no user credentials required.

Moreover, it supports every vCard version, ranging from the legacy 2.1 edition to the latest 4.0.

Download your copy today and follow these steps to import VCF to Office 365.

• Step 1. On the Setup screen, select File System as source and Microsoft 365 as Output. Mark the check box next to Contacts workload and press Next.
  
• Step 2. The source screen is where you browse for the parent folder containing the VCF files. Validate the path and hit Next.
  
• Step 3. Next up, you have the Destination screen, where you have to add the admin email ID and Application ID, validate, and press Next.
  
• Step 4. Map the users to the account in one of three ways: either by direct Fetch, importing a pre-made CSV list of Users, or downloading the custom Template, filling it with data, and uploading it to the tool.
  
• Step 5. See the user list, mark, prioritize, validate, and Import.
  
  

Conclusion

Here in this tutorial, I taught you multiple ways in which you can import VCF to Office 365 cloud. It is not that difficult a process, it’s just the lack of direct import options that forces us to use alternative routes.

Moreover, for Microsoft 365 admins who have to do a mass upload, we have a state-of-the-art utility that does all the major work for them. Use it and auto-add the virtual contact files to O365.