vCardSplit
vCardSplit takes a standard vCard file and exports all valid vCards from it into individual vCard files. This can be useful it you are trying to export contacts into another system. vCardSplit also takes great care to avoid overwriting data at any point - it will never erase or overwrite a file, only create new ones.
Features
vCardSplit is a very small program, hence this short list:
- vCardSplit is a small, fast command line program. But it's not a DOS program - it's pure Win32 code, and as such will handle long filenames without problems.
- vCardSplit will never overwrite data. Ever. The file to be split is opened for reading only, and any files that exist already result in the appropriate vCard being skipped (not exported).
- vCardSplit can handle truncated vCard files with aplomb - it simply skips any truncated (incomplete) entries within the file
- All of vCardSplit's output goes to STDOUT - so you can redirect it with ease using pipes on the command line.
- Despite being a command line program, vCardSplit has simplicity as its philosophy. It takes one argument, and one argument only - the name of the file to split.
- Running vCardSplit without any options will present you with a screen full of help.
- vCardSplit is absolutely free - released under the GPL, so you can even see my source code for it!
System Requirements
- Any 32-bit Windows Platform (Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7)
- About 50Kb (yes, KILObytes!) of free disk space (For installation)
- A user unafraid of the command prompt
Support
No support guaranteed is given with vCardSplit - the program is provided freely, and development and support will be fitted into my own schedule. However, you can comment here with bug reports or with feature requests if you wish.
Known Faults
No software is perfect. Especially if written by me. However, at present there is only one known fault with vCardSplit.
ISSUE:Some international encodings, especially those which use double-bytes to express accents and non-English characters, do not work well.
FIX:None at present. I believe the simplest fix is for me to buy the next version of the compiler, which supports non-western string encodings better.
Otherwise, I've tested vCardSplit three times and nothing went wrong. I can't think what would go wrong, either.
Downloads
Downloads are just at the bottom here.
- If you don't know what source code is, just go for vCardSplit_1-0-2.zip.
If you want the source code, go for vCardSplit-source_1-0-2.zip - but note that it doesn't have anything you can run in it!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| vCardSplit_1-0-2.zip | 28.25 KB |
| vCardSplit-source_1-0-2.zip | 25.81 KB |
Comments
14 comments postedThere are all these companies trying to charge $20 - $50 for apps that split multi .vcf into singles.
God bless you for this FREE tool that works awesome!
Thanks Deavid!
I must admit that when I wrote this tool, way back in 2004, I did notice the huge amount of tools that did something similar for large amounts of money.
I was somewhat amazed at how much people felt they could charge for what appeared to be simple VB programs. As I didn't create a GUI interface, I never felt I could charge that kind of money - some computer knowledge is implied when using vCardSplit!
I released the code under the GPL as a kindness, so that others could learn from it and see how easy it is to do.
I have considered creating a GUI version of vCardSplit - which would still be free. That, I hope, would shake up the market for those (overpriced, in my opinion) pay-for programs that I've seen. It's all a matter of time for me, but it becomes more pressing with each year. Unfortunately, I think a GUI version would require at least 10 times the effort, maybe 20 - making it almost a full month of development for an employed developer. Which I'm not - I do this in my spare time, which means it's more like half a year of solid weekends for me.
If I still want this to be GPL'd and free, I can't afford that GUI version we'd all like. :-(
But my real issue is that other people are charging for this kind of thing just because idiots are still writing software which assumes one vCard per file! That gets my goat more than anything else - it's just sloppy programming, often from some VERY big companies! ;-)
I'm glad this helped you out in this case. It's always good to hear from people that this saved time & money for.
Phil
Firstly i would like to thank you for your kindness help! really appreciated.. but it seems not working for me.. can i have a set of it..? i downloaded from the source you stated but i clicked and its no response.. im using win xp 32bit.. pls help me bro.. thanks!!!
Jason,
You must run vCardSplit from the command line. If you don't, then nothing will happen.
vCardSplit isn't a tool that's suitable for anyone unfamiliar with the command line - it's designed to be used by computer professionals.
I'm afraid that I've long meant to write a version which would be easier and friendlier to use, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Sorry I can't help in this case.
Phil
Thanks for the great tool. Does exactly what I need no more, no less, with no extra crap or bloat. I was actually on the verge of writing a similar tool myself when I came across your site.
Thanks for saving me the work. :-)
Vincent
No problems, Vincent. I'm happy it helped.
It works! I mean, thanks to your vcard splitter I was able to import all my contacts from a google account to my old Nokia 6021. I was desperate, as Nokia PC suite is a crapy piece of software... using CSV's is a nightmare, but vcards work fine, but it only reads from one to one. So I had to split googles vcf into single files, with your wonderful software. Lucky am I, cause then Nokia PC suite allows multiple selection when importing the vcf's.
Thanks again and keep the good work!
I'm always as surprised as anyone else when it works! ;-)
I'm glad it worked for you - thanks for sharing that the Nokia software allows multiple selections. Not all software does, so hopefully that will help others in future.
Thank you David,
Your wonderfully simple and easy to use tool worked perfectly when needing to transfer contacts from Google contacts.vcf to a Nokia 6700 Classic via their PC Sync program - it's a pity you didn't write that! ;)
It was necessary to adapt some of the formatting of the Google .vcf file, but very easy.
Find and Replace [strong]VERSION:3.0[/strong] with [strong]VERSION:2.1[/strong] and [strong]TYPE=[/strong] with 'nothing'
As per this page - http://richard.gluga.com/2009/11/import-google-contacts-to-nokia-pc.html
Thanks once again and Merry Christmas mate!
G
I'm glad it helped.
The version change you had to do is an oddity - thanks for letting people know here, so that they don't get stuck. :-)
Thank you so much! Very handy - was dreading having to import them all into my phone manually!
Just to say, my vcf file had "FN;" instead of "FN:" so it didn't work initially - I'd advise people to compare the test.vcf with their own in notepad to doublecheck! Just did a simple find-replace.
Thank you!
Thanks for that information.
vCardSplit doesn't do anything to the contents of the vCards at the moment, but perhaps there was a specification change that I need to look into - perhaps in the future, I can fix this automatically!
finally i found a good tool to help me...
thanks a lot...
Thanks! Worked _great!
One (minor!) remark: I can confirm that german Umlaute in Names ar not supported correctly (OK, can do a simple find/replace after running vCardSplit)
cu
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