vCard

Virtual Card

A standardized file format used for storing and exchanging contact information. Email clients, mobile devices, and contact management applications widely support it. The vCard format allows users to easily share contact details between different platforms and devices, such as names, phone numbers, email addresses, and more.

The terms vCard and VCF are often used interchangeably when referring to the file format and its contents, but VCF is the more common file type. Both are a plain text file that follows a specific structure to organize contact information. Each information is stored on a separate line, with a specific prefix identifying the data type. The format uses the following basic structure:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
N:LastName;FirstName;MiddleName;Prefix;Suffix
FN:FullName
ORG:Organization
TITLE:JobTitle
TEL;TYPE=WORK,VOICE:PhoneNumber
TEL;TYPE=CELL:MobileNumber
ADR;TYPE=WORK:;;StreetAddress;City;State;ZipCode;Country
EMAIL;TYPE=PREF,INTERNET:EmailAddress
URL:WebsiteURL
END:VCARD

When a vCard is opened or imported into a contact management application or email client, the software parses the structured text and extracts the relevant information to create a new contact entry.

vCard has evolved, with multiple versions:

• vCard 2.1: An older version of the format, still widely supported.
• vCard 3.0: An updated version with added features and properties.
• vCard 4.0 is the latest version of the format, introduced in 2011, with improvements in areas such as multilingual support and data validation.

Most modern contact management systems and email clients support vCard 3.0 and 4.0 formats while retaining backward compatibility with vCard 2.1.

• Abbreviation: vCard