How To Send Contact Information On Iphone

Sending contacts from an iPhone is very easy, and 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 smartphones, iOS devices, Macs, Windows, Windows Phone, Android, and even Blackberry phones, because the exported VCF format is pretty much universally accepted across all platforms as an address book standard.

How to Send Contacts from iPhone to Someone Else's Phone

This is by far the quickest way to share and transfer a contact from one iPhone to another iPhone, smartphone, person, or computer of any sort. Everything is handled in iOS natively:

Launch the "Phone" app and tap on "Contacts"
Navigate to the contact you want to share and tap on their name

Send contact info from an iPhone

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

Send contact info from iPhone to another phone

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.

Example of sending VCF contact info from iPhone

This works exactly the same on all versions of iOS, it may look slightly different with some versions compared to other, but the feature is the same and the ability to share, send, and receive contact data from iPhone is always there.

For some more information, 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.

Importing & Using the Sent Contact Data

For the user on the receiving end, if someone sends you a contact and you want to add it to your phone, it is quite simple.

All you need to do is tap on the contact name vCard (.vcf) to see a preview of the information contained within (name, phone, address, etc), and then the iPhone/iOS user can choose to tap either "Create New Contact" to make a new address book entry for that individual, or select "Add to Existing Contact" to add the vcard data to an existing address book entry.

Though these adding instructions are specifically for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, you will find the importing process of VCF data is practically the same on an Android or Windows device as well. That's because the VCF contact card format is universally supported, and each platform uses it for contact sharing.

This is really the easiest possible way to share contacts and contact information between iPhones, but if you know of another method or one you think is faster or better, then feel free to share it in the comments below!