Easily Transfer Contacts from Android to iPhone

This is a quick little post on some issues I ran into today doing this task at work for someone. They had just gotten a new iPhone and needed their contacts pulled in from their old Android.


Problem: Contacts synced from Google but Google only had their email addresses and not the actual phone numbers as they weren't being saved that way. The phone numbers were saved only on the phone itself.


To transfer contacts from an Android device over to an iPhone:

1. Go on the Android device and open the contacts page. Go to the settings menu and chose to see settings for contacts.

2. Chose to export a backup of contacts onto the device. This will be a .vcf file that will get saved onto the device. For more on the .vcf file type, see: http://fileinfo.com/extension/vcf

3. Find the location that the .vfc file was saved to on the Android device and chose options > share via and chose email. Send the file as an attachment.

4. Email the file to the person so they can access it on the iPhone.

5. On the iPhone, open the .vfc file attachment and it will ask you if you want to import the contacts into the iPhone.

That's it! Contacts are now moved from the old Android device over to the iPhone.


Bonus Problem:  A problem I ran into after getting the contacts transferred was mass deleting contacts in iOS. Android allows you to easily select multiple contacts at a time, while the iPhone does not have this functionality. How can you mass delete contacts on the iPhone?

To get around this, I installed an application on the computer that I have used in the past. It is called AnyTrans. AnyTrans is a tool used to transfer content from iPhones, but it always gives access to a few neat features. AnyTrans can be found here:

http://www.imobie.com/anytrans/

I connected the phone to the computer after installing AnyTrans and opened the program. I went into the program and chose the Contacts section. You'll see on the left-side check boxes next to the names. You can now go through and mass select contacts to delete from your iPhone!