Send Contacts from iPhone to Another iPhone
Sending contacts from an iPhone is very easy, all data about the contact; from name, phone number, picture, email, URL, etc, can be exported as an inclusive vCard bundle and sent to someone else by email or text message. While we’ll focus on sending contacts between iPhones, these vCards are also usable by other iOS devices, Macs, Windows, and even Android phones.
Send Contacts from an iPhone to Someone Else
- Launch “Phone” and tap on “Contacts”
- Navigate to the contact you want to share and tap on their name
- Tap on “Share Contact”
- Select how to send the contact to another iPhone, choose “Email” to send it as an attachment to an email, or choose “Message” to send the contact through iMessage or SMS text
Depending on the choice of sharing method, either the Mail or Messages app will open and contain the selected contact in a preformatted message. If you choose Messages, the recipient will either need SMS service or iMessages enabled. From here you choose the recipient of the contact as if you were sending a standard email or text message and click send as usual.
On the receiving end, if someone sends you a contact all you need to do is tap on the contact name vCard (.vcf) to see a preview of the information, and then tap either “Create New Contact” or “Add to Existing Contact”.
If you were curious, the vCard format is not proprietary to Apple and the iPhone, these documents are widely considered the standard for virtual business cards, and should work on virtually any modern communication device, be it a smartphone, tablet, or PC. Obviously the standardization makes it much easier than manually typing out name, phone numbers, emails, and whatever else, so get in the habit of using the iPhones vCard sharing system and you’ll thank yourself later.
You can go the other direction as well, export from Address Book and send to iPhone
[...] via OSXDaily [...]
True – sending a contact to another iPhone is easy.
But nothing beats the “Star Trekkiness” of zapping a contact across using those old infrared ports – think Palm.
I kind of miss that.
How about sending/receiving contacts and files via Bluetooth?
I called your friend Colin Oates, he is a good friend. Everyone should have his phone number on their favorites list.
[...] containing all the contacts to the phone, these .vcf files can be exported from many other phones, another iPhone, Address Book, Google and Gmail, Yahoo, and just about anywhere else you’d store contact [...]
What if I have 200 contacts?? this is not a “method” to send contacts. This is just the capability of iphone’s contacts app. Please be creative..
@KA I used a third party app called Copytrans Contacts to transfer the entire iPhone address book from my old to my new iPhone. It’s easy to use, but doesn’t run on Mac (tried it out).
Thanks for sharing. You just made my day.
[...] you’re on the other side sending a phone number out, remember that you can directly send contacts from the iPhone through iMessage and email that contain a full address book listing for a person, including their [...]
Useless…..thanks for telling us how to save them….
[...] If you choose the iMessage feature and the recipient has iMessage configured with their Mac, iPhone, or iOS device properly, they’ll be able to immediately import the contact right into their Contacts list in iOS just by tapping on it, just like sharing Contacts between iPhones. [...]