Contact list formatter — clean, de-duplicate and export contacts

How to use the contact list formatter

1. Paste your rows into Contact rows (comma, tab, semicolon or | separated), one contact per line.
2. In Column order, list what each column holds, using name, email, phone, company, title or ignore. For example company, name, email.
3. Tick First row is a header if your paste starts with column names, so that row is skipped.
4. Leave Capitalise names on to fix names typed in all capitals or all lower case.
5. Read the counts, then use Clean contacts (copy or CSV download), Formatted list or All contacts as one .vcf.

What it does and when to use it

Lists from forms, sign-ups and old spreadsheets are rarely tidy: the same person appears twice, names are in capitals, and some rows are empty. This tool fixes that in one pass and gives you a table for spreadsheets, a plain list for documents and a .vcf file for address books.

Use it before a mail merge, a label or badge run, or an import into your phone. Once the list is clean, the address label sheet and the name badge maker can print from it, and the email extractor helps when the addresses are buried in free text.

How it works

Each line is split on its separator the way CSV is read: a cell in double quotes, such as “Nair, Priya”, stays whole even if it contains the separator, and two quote marks inside it stand for one. Extra spaces are collapsed. Cells are matched to fields in the order you gave. If the email column is empty, the first cell that looks like an email address is used instead. Emails are lower-cased. Phone numbers keep only digits, +, brackets, spaces and dashes.

A row with no name, email or phone is counted as an empty row and skipped. For the .vcf, the first word of the name becomes the given name and the rest the family name. Every vCard needs a display name (FN), so a contact without a name uses the company, then the email address or phone number.

Worked examples

The preset list. Four contacts are pasted, one of them twice with different capitals and spacing. The tool reports Contacts: 3, Duplicates removed: 1 and Empty rows skipped: 0, and the first table row reads:

Priya Nair | priya@saffron.example | +91 98450 12345 | Saffron Studio

The matching vCard entry starts N:Nair;Priya;;; and includes TEL;TYPE=CELL:+91 98450 12345.

Semicolons, company first. With column order company, name, email, the row Lumen Health;dr anne-marie o'brien;ANNE@LUMEN.example becomes Dr Anne-Marie O'Brien | anne@lumen.example. A row holding only a company name is counted under Empty rows skipped: 1.

Limits and tips

• A name written surname first, such as “Nair, Priya”, is kept as one cell, but the vCard still takes its first word (“Nair,”) as the given name. Write names given name first if you plan to import the .vcf.
• Titles such as “Dr” are treated as the given name in the vCard. Check entries like that after import.
• Only one phone number per contact is kept, saved as a mobile number. For a detailed card with address and website, use the vCard generator.