Importing Outlook Contacts to Apple Contacts

G'day Mate,

I am a MS Exchange Administrator and I am able to perform this without using any third party software which are not trusted and may compromise your security and privacy if not careful.

Follow the steps and this will be like a cakewalk.

1. Export the contacts file in CSV format. Use Microsoft article below.

Import contacts to Outlook - Office Support

2. After saving that .csv file open Google contacts. Link is below.

https://contacts.google.com/

Please note google will prompt you to go old version of Google contacts Say YES

https://www.google.com/contacts/u/0/?cplus=0#contacts

3. After opening google contacts click on Import Contacts on left and browsing your saved .csv file.

4. All your .csv contacts will now be imported to your google contacts.

( I believe 99% of world has google account but still if you are in that 1% please create one, This won't make you hate Apple 🙂)

5. This step is optional but you can merge and duplicate you google contacts by clicking the check box (tick) to select all contacts
then More > clicking merge and duplicate tabs.

6. Now in Google Contacts you can click the check box(tick) to select all contacts and then More > Export > vCard Format. This will save file in Apple vCard Format.

7. Open Apple iCloud contacts iCloud — Sign in

8. In iCloud Contacts Click Actions menu with (the Gear Symbol) on the left bottom side and Import vCard.

9. Browse the file you downloaded from Google Contacts and you are done!

ALL YOUR CONTACTS WILL APPEAR IN ICLOUD AND SYNC TO YOUR IPHONE 😀

I've found a hack to this problem. In outlook, select multiple contacts and then click on the button in the tool bar under Home called 'Forward Contact.' It will give you the option to forward as a business card. A new email message will appear with all the contacts as attachments and they will all be in .vcf format. Copy and paste them into a regular file folder. Now you have .vcf files which Apple will easily import.

What mac, what OS are you using?

HamRadioElijah wrote:

Thank you in advance.

I'm trying to import my outlook.com contacts to my apple contacts on my brand new iMac and when I try this with a csv file I get a popup window that says 'can't read file.' This is what I'm doing:

1. From outlook.com I can export my contacts to my desktop as a csv file of my contacts (which I can open in Excel for Mac or Numbers) (outlook.com will only export this type of file).

2. When I try to import the outlook csv file my Apple contacts say's cannot read.

3. I can open the csv file in excel or numbers and convert it to there to other file types, but no luck with those so far.

4. Has to be a way!

Convert it to what?

You need a vcard file (.vcf) for Contacts

I suppose the profile Powerbook is incorrect too...😀

Export as "vCard": The vCard is an international standard, but there are regularly version updates. Your Contacts in ElCapitan is the latest version of vCard.

Can Outlook export vCard ?

Contacts is very picky about the format of the CSV, so make sure there isn't and spurious things in the file and make sure every field is defined for each line.

For example, if the header line has nine fields, make sure each line also has nine fields (eight commas).

Also, make sure any field that contains a comma in the data is delimited with double quotes.

For example, 123 Ninth St., Apt 2B needs to be "123 Ninth St., Apt 2B"

HamRadioElijah wrote:

outlook.com will only export a csv file to my desktop.

Convert it to a vcard

HamRadioElijah wrote:

When I open the csv file it opens either in excel or numbers. Do I make these changes inside the sheet that opens with my contacts from outlook?

Try opening it with a text editor, like TextEdit. It's just text.

CSV stands for comma-separated variables, i.e. each field of data is separated by a comma. That's why you need to delimit any commas that are part of the data in the field.

You might also just try opening in Numbers, then Export it again as a new file. If Microsoft pooped all over it inside, that might clean it up.

There are many converters available online, Google it

I googled for you, go here: http://www.csvtovcard.com/

HamRadioElijah wrote:

When I go to Numbers and save the document it doesn't have an option to save as a Vcard. So I'm guessing I need to clean up the csv file as you suggested..

I wasn't meaning to export as vCard. I meant to export as another CSV which might clean it up such that it is recognizable.