Normalize vCard Contacts

Clean a pasted .vcf address book in one pass — trim and lowercase emails, format valid phone numbers with an optional country hint, tidy contact names, and keep custom vCard fields intact.

About this tool

vCard Normalize cleans a pasted .vcf address book while keeping the original vCard structure. It is useful before importing contacts into a CRM, phone, or mailing-list tool: normalize the fields people search and dedupe on, without uploading the address book to a contact-cleanup service.

The transform is intentionally conservative:

EMAIL values are trimmed and lowercased by default.
TEL values are reformatted to E.164 only when they parse and validate. Use Default country (US, GB, DE, …) for national numbers without a +.
FN, N, and NICKNAME have repeated whitespace collapsed; optional name casing can keep the existing case, title-case it, uppercase it, or lowercase it.
Unknown properties such as ORG, ADR, PHOTO, X-*, and custom TYPE parameters are preserved rather than rebuilt from a lossy form model.

Folded vCard lines are unfolded before processing, and the input's LF/CRLF line ending style is preserved. Invalid phone numbers are left untouched instead of being guessed into a wrong international number.

Worked example

Input (with default_country=US, name_case=title, lowercase_email=true):

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN: jane   DOE
N:DOE;jane;;;
TEL;TYPE=CELL:(415) 555-2671
EMAIL: [email protected] 
END:VCARD

Output:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN:Jane Doe
N:Doe;Jane;;;
TEL;TYPE=CELL:+14155552671
EMAIL:[email protected]
END:VCARD

FAQ

Why does phone normalization need a default country?

Numbers such as (415) 555-2671 are national-format numbers; the same digits can mean different things in different countries. The country hint tells the phone metadata parser how to interpret those numbers. Already-international numbers that start with + can be normalized without a hint.

Will invalid or short phone numbers be changed?

No. A phone value is rewritten only when it parses and validates for the chosen country metadata. Short codes, extensions the parser cannot understand, typos, and other ambiguous values are left as-is so the tool does not corrupt a contact.

Does this preserve custom vCard fields?

Yes. The tool only rewrites values for EMAIL, TEL, FN, N, and NICKNAME. It preserves unknown properties and parameters such as ORG, ADR, PHOTO, X-CUSTOM, and TYPE=work instead of parsing the whole card into a limited form and serializing it back.

What are the limits of title casing?

Title casing is a simple per-word casing pass. It handles ordinary names like jane DOE → Jane Doe, but it does not know every cultural or family-name convention; for example McDonald may become Mcdonald. The default keep mode only tidies spacing and leaves original casing intact.

Developer & Automation Access

Run it from the terminal

Same engine as this page, headless — via the gizza CLI:

gizza tool vcard-normalize "BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:3.0
FN: jane   DOE
N:DOE;jane;;;
TEL;TYPE=CELL:(415) 555-2671
EMAIL: [email protected] 
END:VCARD"

New to the CLI? Get gizza →

Open it by URL

Pre-fill and auto-run this tool with query parameters — the names match the API/CLI:

https://gizza.ai/tools/vcard-normalize/?data=BEGIN%3AVCARD%0AVERSION%3A3.0%0AFN%3A%20jane%20%20%20DOE%0AN%3ADOE%3Bjane%3B%3B%3B%0ATEL%3BTYPE%3DCELL%3A%28415%29%20555-2671%0AEMAIL%3A%20Jane.DOE%40Example.COM%20%0AEND%3AVCARD&default_country=US&name_case=keep&lowercase_email=true

Machine-readable descriptor: tool.json — title + parameters JSON Schema for agents.