Import multiple VCF contacts into Gmail with Windows 7

One of rather frequent tasks is import of existing contacts from other sources into newly created Gmail account.

There are lot of tools (Gmail offer that as well) for two-way synhronization between various applications (Outlook and such), but one time, one way (Desktop -> Gmail) is not covered very well.

So, task is simple: import multiple VCF (vCard) contacts into Gmail contacts.

I will use Windows Contacts as an example inside Windows 7 (Nokia PC Suite can synhronize contacts in your phone with Windows Contacts) but procedure can be applied to any set of *.vcf files.

Get Windows Contacts into *.vcf format

Open Windows Contacts
Select “Organize / Select All“
Select Export
Select “vCards (folder of .vcf files)“
Click on Export

You will be asked to select folder where all contacts wil be exported as .vcf files:

Let’s assume that you created new folder Cards on C: drive and exported *.vcf there. Also, create another subfolder of Cards folder – Final.

So, new structure is C:CardsFinal with bunch of *.vcf files into C:Cards

Combine all *.vcf files into one big file

Next step is to combine all *.vcf files into one big file.

Open Windows Explored and locate C:Cards. Press and hold Shift key and right-click with mouse anywhere in folder and select option “Open command window here“:

Don’t get scared by black window you got; you need to type just one short command:

copy /b *.vcf FinalBig.Vcf

Merge multiple files

You can close command windows after this.

If you are English speaking person and have no strange characters in names of your contacts, you can stop here – use C:CardsFinalBig.vcf as source of import in Gmail Contacts and you are fine.

However, most of us non-English speaking should do final step: proper conversion of file.

Convert big vcf file into UTF8

We will use Powershell for this final step.

Press Start, type Powershell and select Windows PowerShell. Now you will be presented with blue 🙂 screen. Type following sequence of commands, pressing Enter on end of every line (or do copy / paste)

cd CardsFinal get-content "Big.Vcf" | out-file -encoding "UTF8" -filepath "ConvertedBig.Vcf"