Import vCards

12.2.3 Import vCards

vCards are virtual contact cards used to store and exchange contact info for individuals and groups.

A vCard file is an ordinary text file formated according to the this IETF Specification.

A vCard file may contain one or more contact cards, and typically has a file extension of .vcf.

One way to create a vCard file is by exporting one or more contacts from the Apple Contacts app for the Mac.

Both the Apple Contacts app and the vCard spec provide for a lot of flexibility, and the intent behind Notenik’s support for this spec as an import option is not to provide a perfect translation of every possible field, but rather to provide something that is simpler but still useful.

The following table shows the support provided by Notenik for various field types.

vCard Parm	Notenik Label	Notes
ADR	Address	The vCard spec calls for a street address (or a delivery address) to be specified as a strict series of positional values, separated by semi-colons. It turns out that Apple Maps will accept these sorts of values with no problem, so Notenik will not attempt any reformatting of this field into a more conventional-looking value.
BDAY	Birthday	This will become a Date field type.
EMAIL	Email	See the note below for info on how multiple values will be handled.
FN	Full Name	This will be stored with a label of `Full Name`, but with the Title field type, and the Note’s file name will be based on this value.
N	Name	This will be stored with the Person field type.
NICKNAME	Nickname	This will be stored as an ordinary String.
NOTE	Note/Body	This will be stored as the body of the Note.
ORG	Organization	This will be stored as an ordinary String field.
TEL	Phone	This will be stored as a Phone field.
TITLE	Job Title	Another ordinary string.
URL	Link	This will become a clickable Link.
X-ABShowAs	Kind	If the input value is “COMPANY”, then this Pick From field will be set to “org”; otherwise it will be assumed to be an individual. This will become a Pick From field, with the following allowable values: family, individual, group, org.

Note that you may wish to use the Contacts starter pack to initialize your Collection before importing a vCard file, in which case the Title field will have a label of Full Name, and the Body field will have a label of Note. However use of this starter pack is not required.

When performing a vCard import, Notenik will unlock the Collection dictionary so that any missing fields may be added, to avoid data loss. So even if you start with Basic Notes, the import will add the needed field definitions.

Multiple Values

Note that both the Apple Contacts app and the vCard spec support multiple values for certain fields, such as ADR, EMAIL, TEL and URL.

When multiple values are found for one of these fields, on a single Note, then the Notenik import will handle these in the following ways, depending on the type of field.

EMAIL - The first email found for a contact will become the Email field; additional ones will be labeled Email-2, Email-3, etc.
ADR - The first address found for a contact will become the Address field; additional ones will be labeled Address-2, Address-3, etc.
TEL - The first telephone number found for a contact will become the Phone field; additional ones will be differentiated by a suffix: either -cell, -home, or -work, of using a trailing integer suffix if there are no other distinguising qualifiers.

Next: Export as Web Book