Free online VCF to XML converter

A contact-management system, migration utility, or archive may require XML when contacts are supplied as a .vcf file. Converting the file exposes names, numbers, email addresses, and other fields to XML-based software for import or editing.

What the VCF format is

For contact data, VCF means vCard, a text-based format specified by standards including vCard 3.0 (RFC 2426) and vCard 4.0 (RFC 6350). One file can contain one or many contact records with fields such as FN, N, TEL, EMAIL, ADR, ORG, NOTE, and PHOTO.

Apple Contacts, Google Contacts, Microsoft Outlook, Android address books, and email clients create VCF files for export, sharing, or backup. VCF supports line folding, escaped characters, field parameters such as TYPE=CELL, and application-specific X- properties. Its line-based syntax is portable, but many systems that process hierarchical data need XML instead.

What XML is

XML represents data with nested elements, attributes, and text. Standard XML parsers can read it, and an XML Schema Definition (XSD) can validate its structure, required fields, data types, and namespaces. XML has no universal contact schema, so the converter must produce the element names and hierarchy required by the receiving application.

A basic result could use <contacts>, <contact>, <fullName>, <phone>, and <email>. Proper XML escaping preserves characters such as & and <; attributes can retain VCF parameters such as CELL and WORK. The resulting XML is useful only if its structure matches the target software's documentation or schema.

Using the built-in converter

1. Open 101convert.com and choose the VCF-to-XML conversion.
2. Select the contact file with the .vcf extension and start the conversion.
3. Download the generated .xml file.
4. Open the XML in a browser or XML editor and check the number of contacts, names, phone numbers, email addresses, and special fields before importing it.

This method requires no installation and is suitable when the destination accepts the converter's generic XML structure. Contact files can contain personal information, so use a local method instead when upload restrictions or confidentiality requirements apply.

Using Python for a defined structure

Use a script when the destination requires exact element names, namespaces, attributes, or an XSD. Install the vCard parser with python -m pip install vobject, then save the following as vcf_to_xml.py:

import base64
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import vobject

root = ET.Element("contacts")
with open("contacts.vcf", encoding="utf-8-sig") as source:
    for card in vobject.readComponents(source):
        contact = ET.SubElement(root, "contact")
        for name, properties in card.contents.items():
            for prop in properties:
                element = ET.SubElement(contact, name.lower())
                for parameter, values in prop.params.items():
                    if not isinstance(values, (list, tuple)):
                        values = [values]
                    element.set(parameter.lower(), ",".join(str(v) for v in values))
                value = prop.value
                if isinstance(value, bytes):
                    element.set("encoding", "base64")
                    element.text = base64.b64encode(value).decode("ascii")
                else:
                    element.text = str(value)

ET.ElementTree(root).write("contacts.xml", encoding="utf-8", xml_declaration=True)

Run it with python vcf_to_xml.py. The script creates a generic structure and preserves repeated properties and parameters, but it does not automatically conform to a vendor's contact schema. Replace the generated names, add namespaces, or map structured values such as N and ADR according to the recipient's XSD or import specification.

Quality and compatibility limits

Check the source version and encoding before conversion. A parser should handle folded lines and escaped punctuation, but custom fields, contact groups, time zones, embedded photographs, and vendor-specific properties may be omitted, flattened, or represented differently. Structured vCard fields can also become plain text unless the converter explicitly maps their components.

Well-formed XML is not automatically importable XML. Validate the output against the recipient's XSD when one exists, or compare it with a sample file from the target application. Do not use a spreadsheet as a general conversion method: importing VCF into Excel or another spreadsheet can lose repeated fields, parameters, photos, and multiline values, and an XML export may use a spreadsheet-specific schema rather than the contact schema required by the destination.

Confirm that the input is a contact VCF. The same extension is used by the scientific Variant Call Format, which begins with metadata such as ##fileformat=VCF and stores genomic variants, not contacts; it requires a genomics-specific XML schema and converter.