Invalid vCard: missing BEGIN:VCARD / END:VCARD

This is one of the most common hard failures in vCard imports. Every contact record must be wrapped exactly like this:

BEGIN:VCARD
...
END:VCARD

If either line is missing (or malformed), many apps will refuse to import the file.

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Common causes

• The file is not a vCard (it’s CSV/JSON/other)
• A tool exported “vCard-like” data but didn’t include wrappers
• The file was truncated during download or copy/paste
• Wrappers were misspelled (e.g., BEGIN: VCARD) or have trailing spaces
• Multiple contacts were concatenated incorrectly

How to fix it

1) Verify the first non-empty line

The first record should start with BEGIN:VCARD (no leading junk).

2) Ensure each record has an END:VCARD

Search the file. For each BEGIN:VCARD, there must be a matching END:VCARD.

3) Normalize whitespace and line endings

Use consistent newlines (LF is safest) and remove trailing spaces on wrapper lines.

Recommended workflow

If the file has more than a few records, validating and generating a repaired .vcf is usually quicker than manual editing.

Related help articles

Common vCard Import Errors Overview of formatting and encoding issues across major contact clients. VCF Only Imports One Contact Fix record boundary issues that cause multi-contact file truncation. VCF File Won't Open? Fix vCard Errors Troubleshoot unopenable VCF files and structural corruption.

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