CorrectVCF

VCF won’t import on iPhone / iOS Contacts — how to fix

iPhone import failures usually fall into one of three buckets:

  1. The file isn’t really a vCard
  2. The vCard is invalid (formatting/required fields)
  3. The encoding trips iCloud/iOS quirks

1) Quick checks

  • Make sure the filename ends in .vcf
  • Open it in a text editor and confirm you see BEGIN:VCARD / END:VCARD
  • Confirm each contact has VERSION, FN, and N

2) iCloud’s “invisible character” problems (encoding/BOM)

Some exporters add hidden bytes at the start of the file (like a UTF‑8 BOM). Some iCloud flows are sensitive to this and will reject the file.

If you exported from a tool you don’t control (or concatenated multiple files), validating and rewriting the file as clean UTF‑8 is often the fix.

3) Record boundary problems (multi-contact files)

A multi-contact .vcf should look like a sequence of records:

BEGIN:VCARD
...
END:VCARD
BEGIN:VCARD
...
END:VCARD

If there’s an END:VCARD missing, iOS may import zero contacts or only the first contact.

4) Line folding (long properties)

iOS importers can be strict about RFC folding rules. If a line wraps without the required leading space on the continuation line, the whole record can fail.

  1. Validate the .vcf file.
  2. Fix the first structural issue (BEGIN/END, VERSION, FN/N).
  3. Normalize encoding/line endings and retry import.

If you just want a clean file to import into iPhone / iCloud, use the CorrectVCF autofix tool to produce a repaired .vcf and try again.

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