I need to transfer a set of contacts from my Mac to someone who works on a PC. She’s already tried transferring the files with a USB drive, but her PC can’t open the files. We must be doing something wrong. Can you help?
To export contacts, open the Address Book application and select the contacts that you want to export. You can select multiple contacts by holding down the Command key and clicking on the contact entries. Choose File > Export > Export vCard. In the pop-up dialog, select the save location, and then click the Save button. After the export is complete, you will see a vCard file that contains the contacts that you selected. Transfer this file to the Windows PC.
Ensure that you select Export vCard and not Address Book Archive. One is readable by a PC, the other is not.
Over on the Windows machine, open the Contacts section of the user folder by searching for Contacts in the Start menu. Once there, click on the Import button in the toolbar. Select vCard, and then click Import. Once you locate the vCard file, the Import dialogs will walk you through the process. You will need to manually accept each contact.
You can also import these vCard-flavored contacts into any vCard-friendly application (such as Outlook) using a similar process.
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