To import contacts into you iPhone and OS X Address Book isn’t immediately obvious, so after figuring it out, thought I’d post it. Many of us have existing contact lists in Gmail, Yahoo! or Address Book on our Macs that we’d like to import into iPhone.
There will probably be simpler, more automated methods, but this is the solution that worked for me.
1) Plug your iPhone into you Mac and go to iTunes. Click “Sync Yahoo! Address Book contacts” and configure. Click picture below to zoom in.
2) Log into your Yahoo! account and go to Contacts. (Sign up for a Yahoo! account if you don’t have one because you’ll need it for this because Apple Address Book only syncs with Yahoo!, not Gmail or any other online accounts except their proprietary MobileMe).
3) From Gmail, import any vCard or CSV files into your contacts list. Yahoo! doesn’t have this feature. You can export vCard or CSV files from Outlook, Palm Desktop and many other programs you may have contacts in. (This will require a Gmail account).
4) From Yahoo! click on “Import your Contacts from other accounts to Yahoo!” From here you can import Gmail, Facebook and other contact lists to Yahoo! When you’re done, you can clean up your contacts with the “Fix duplicate entries” if you like.
5) Next is to simply sync your iPhone in iTunes by clicking the “Sync” button, which you can see in the first picture above.
Pine Mountain Walker 
Hey steve,
When I go to import the folder of vcards it won’t let me select all to import. It’s making me do them one at a time. torture!
and hints?
c
Can you select all and import that way? Let me know if you figure it out!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!!! I had no idea and your pictures really helped! 🙂
You rock! 😀
Lori in Texas.
hello Lori in Texas
We have an app in the app store that makes this easier.
Import and Export Contacts lets you import your contacts directly from a vCard or csv file into your iphone.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/import-and-export-contacts/id395154442?mt=8
but this is FREE!
there is a easier way without connecting your iphone to itunes whatever contacts you are trying to import into your iphone export into .vcf then email the file to an account attached to your phone. Open it and it will ask you if you want to import them all or you can go through the list an import specific contacts and even merge them with an exisiting one. I find this much easier than syncing through itunes and you dont need a mobileme account to do this.
Thanks odessa! Great tip. J
so easy top tip thanks
Great tip. A free app to do this would be sublime.
THANK YOU!!! this is the easiest way.
and it will ask if you want to merge the existing contact.
Wow! Thank you Odessa. This worked and took about 20 seconds total. I came *this* close to buying a $3.99 app to do this. Thank you so much!
Thanks Odessa – worked perfectly !
wow, thanks! i tried to import my contacts from my address book on my mac through itunes. it kept giving me multiple versions of the same name, and i couldn’t figure out why. your solution was genius and worked perfectly (though a few kanji names didn’t carry over correctly…oh well!)
Just drag and drop your vcf contacts into your mac address book and it will import them as a group, not one by one.
This worked perfectly. But this will not sync with my current Gmail contact right? How can I make them both sync back and forth?
OK…I just have to say that you ROCK! Thanks for making it EASY!
Odessa:
Sorry about this beginner type question…but how do you export the contacts into an “.vcf” file? The only file options I see on my MacBook Pro are .pst files for Windows and .olm files for Mac.
Thanks very much,
Scott
VCardf Backup does so. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vcard-backup/id452726300?l=en&mt=8
you ROCK! thanks a million!
Thank you Odessa!! I have been ripping my hair out trying to figure this out! Within 30 seconds my nice clean list appeared – thank you!!!!
odessa –
Great tip. Almost worked perfectly for me, except that I also work in languages other than ones that use latin alphabets, so I couldn’t get a completely automatic ordering of the imported contacts. Still, much faster and more reliable than manual input.
Thanks!
Excellent tip odessa. Thank you!!
I had a Verizon phone that exported its contacts in .csv. I found a webpage that converts .csv to .vcf very quickly: http://homepage.mac.com/phrogz/CSV2vCard_v2.html . Total process to get from Verizon phone to iphone took less than 10 minutes.
Tried the link on 22 Jun 2011 – it is broken.
Seems to be working for me…
How do you import group contact lists from Yahoo into your iphone? I can import all individual contacts but the groups do not transfer over????
No experience with that. My speculation is that you will lose the groupings since they are specific to Yahoo’s own system and not likely in the exported flat file.
ODESSA-
Amongst all the tips yours was the simplest and the most workable.
THANK YOU.
Hello,
I tried emailing myself the .csv and it didn’t ask to import them into contacts, it just read the CSV file as if it were mail.
When i try syncing via iTunes, it just uploaded the few i’d created on my iPhone to my Yahoo, the opposite of what i expected or wanted.
Supposedly you can do it ‘over the air’, by adding a cardDAV account, but it keeps failing verification for a reason i can’t fathom.
What i don’t get is that contact lists are simple pretty simple databases, i don’t know why this is so difficult.
Can anyone help?
With recent changes to iTunes & iOS, syncing with Google is now an option, whereas it used to only include Yahoo!. Both services include CVS importing, so you may want to check one you haven’t tried or check the quality of your CVS file.
It really isn’t too hard, and some posters have explained simple ways to import contacts on this thread with the use of software. Now, this seems unneeded except for special needs maybe.
Hard to say specifically how to fix your import issue. It is likely something fairly simple once you see what it is.
Post back if you have any success or more information.
Good luck!
Also, i tried importing a VCF file. I only takes the first 7 contacts, and ignores the rest. I’ve tried to totally clean up my Contact list (both first and last name, phone numbers in the format 1 (905) 967-1111, used by the iPhone).
The CSV and VCF files seem fine, so there’s either bad data somewhere in the Yahoo Contacts, which wouldn’t surprise me, or a flaw in the iPhone importing, which seems less likely.
thanks a lot!!
worked perfectly fine!!
I would like to add., we can even use with gmail contacts too with the new itunes version 10.1.2
I tried on iphone 4. It didn’t worked for me.
System = XP
itune = 10.2.1.1
iphone = 4
Any help would be appreciated.
used the vcf file option, that is export contact from current phone (HTC Desire) to vcf file and then sent that file to email account attached to iphone 4, open the email and attachment and it asks to import contact and does import all in one click..!!!!!!
Make sure your contacts are in your gmail account, connect to itunes, hit info tab after you select your device, then select sync contacts with Google Contacts, select allcontacts or selected, hit apply or sync and bingo your in action
I have the new iphone 4 black and had dramas copying all my stuff over especially my images, but all safe and sound, even encrypted
By the way, I found this: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=138740
It tells you exactly how to sync your contacts between Gmail and your iPhone. Works perfectly and automatically syncs all contacts after that as well.
Patty , you have really found the best solution….Thank you Dear….
Thanx, it was a great help ! I’m new user of iphone…so things looked a bit tricky but this information helped me a lot !
There is an App to bulk import VCF contacts to iPhone. Very convenient and easy to use. Please check out at
http://creiapp.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-app-1-vcard-backup.html
Hi everybody !!!! wanna try it.
Sync Contacts
Thanks so much for this!
Well Odessa thanks a lot
wow..thanks that worked well for me!!!
Odessa when i open that mail into my phone i dont get an option of download all instead i need to save 1 by 1 how can i get all at once?
Hi Pine Mountain Walker. I am a PC user and am currently trying ways to transfer my iPhone contacts to my new iPad. I do not wish to sync both devices to one-and the same Apple ID. How can I achieve the transfer and import the iPhone contacts to my iPad? Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the question pebne. I had an iPad for a short while and never tried this. So my answer would be a guess.
The issues of transferring contacts (or music, video, etc.) on Apple products is part of the reason I switched to Android-based systems. You have your Google account and voila! it’s on your device…but this is no help to you unless you want to switch platforms.
My guess is to export your contacts into a CVS (text) file (or other supported file) and then import them on your iPad.
Sorry I’m not more helpful on this one…
Anyone out there with an iPad tried this?
hi pebne,
with the App “VCard Backup”,(http://creiapp.blogspot.com/2011/08/my-app-1-vcard-backup.html) you just need a few steps.
1. install the App in your iPhone
2. go to the second tab of the App “Backup and restore”, do backup, then send the vcf file via email.
3. open this email from your iPad, open the attachment “xxxx.vcf”, you will have the option to import all contacts. (no need to install the app in iPad)
I recently bought the new iPad and was faced with the same problem. After a small online research, the best I could find was this guide by O’Reilly on how to transfer iPhone contacts to an iPad without the need for the iCloud or iTunes:
http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/3308-how-to-transfer-iphone-contacts-to-ipad-without-itunes-or-the-icloud/
Hopefully it would be of help to you too.
Thanks itzunjoey.
Well it doesn’t work… it works only when i arrived an email. Then i can import the attached vcf card…
I have found an site. you must register and put you name … in the site… u get an qrcode with the link to ure own vcard site and there it is possible to send the vcf from the site to you… i find it great! b-card.us is the url…
greets
Yeah, this doesn’t work for me. I try to open the vcf attachment and it says “safari cannot open this attachment.” I tried to open it in gmail and nothing happens. This is with the vcard and the cvs file.
I wanted to get my contacts from my ancient Blackberry onto my iPhone. I exported the address book via Bluetooth to my Mac and then emailed it as an attachment and clicked on it. All seemed to have imported fine. Thanks very much for the very helpful guidance.