How to Scan Business Cards Into Excel (or Numbers, or Sheets)
A spreadsheet is still the most portable place to keep a pile of contacts — it opens anywhere, it uploads to any CRM, and nobody can take it away from you. The awkward part is getting cards *into* it without typing 200 rows by hand. Here's the short path, and exactly what the file looks like when it lands.
From paper card to spreadsheet row
- Scan each card with your iPhone camera. Recognition runs on the phone, so the card image isn't uploaded anywhere and there's no waiting — a photo of a card you already took works too, via the photo library.
- Check the fields on the review screen. Name, title, company, phone, email, website and address land in separate fields; tap any one to correct it before you save.
- Save the card. It joins a library on your iPhone, with the original photo kept alongside it so you can always check what the paper actually said.
- Open Export, choose Spreadsheet (CSV) and pick everything (or just the cards you want).
- Send the file where you need it — save to Files, AirDrop it to a Mac, or mail it to yourself — then open it in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets.
What's actually in the CSV
One row per card, seven columns, in this order. No hidden columns, no ID gibberish, no 'upgrade to see the rest'.
Cardessa CSV columns
| Column | What goes in it | Example cell |
|---|---|---|
| Name | The full name as printed on the card | Maya Ortiz |
| Title | Job title line | Head of Partnerships |
| Company | Company name (all-caps logo lines are tidied to title case) | Northgale Logistics |
| Phone | Every number on the card, labelled and separated by a semicolon | mobile: +1 415 555 0142; office: +1 415 555 0100 |
| Every address on the card, separated by a semicolon | maya@northgale.com; m.ortiz@northgale.com | |
| Website | Web address, normalised (no https://, no trailing slash) | northgale.com |
| Address | Street address lines, joined with commas | 500 Harrison St, Suite 210, San Francisco CA |
The file is UTF-8, comma-separated, with quotes escaped the standard way (RFC 4180) — so a company name like `Ortiz, Ward & Co.` stays in one cell instead of splitting into two.
Opening it without mangling names
Numbers and Google Sheets read UTF-8 CSV correctly when you just open the file. Excel is the fussy one: double-clicking a CSV on some Windows setups makes it guess the encoding, and names with accents (Müller, Ó Braonáin, Şahin) come out as garbage.
The fix takes ten seconds: in Excel, use Data → From Text/CSV, pick the file, and set File Origin: UTF-8 before you click Load. Same data, correct letters.
Want each phone number in its own column? Split the Phone column on `; ` in your spreadsheet — the labels (`mobile:`, `office:`, `fax:`) are already there, so a find-and-replace does the rest. It's deliberately one column so that a card with three numbers never silently loses two of them.
Why not just type them in
Typing is fine for five cards. At thirty, two things go wrong: you drop the ones that felt unimportant at the time (which is exactly who you'll need in a year), and you introduce typos in the digits you'll later dial. A scan keeps the original photo attached, so a wrong digit is checkable rather than lost.
If your destination is a contacts app rather than a spreadsheet, take the vCard route instead — see scanning cards straight into iPhone Contacts or into Google Contacts.
Frequently asked questions
Can I scan business cards directly into Excel?
Not directly — Excel has no card scanner. The working path is: scan on your phone, export a CSV, open the CSV in Excel. That's two taps and one file, and the CSV is a normal spreadsheet file you can keep.
What columns does the export have?
Seven: Name, Title, Company, Phone, Email, Website, Address — one row per card. Cards with several phone numbers or emails keep them all in one cell, separated by a semicolon.
Do I need an internet connection?
No. Recognition happens on your iPhone, so scanning works in airplane mode. Only the moment you send the exported file somewhere involves the network.
Will the accents in names survive?
The file is UTF-8, so yes — as long as Excel is told that. Use Data → From Text/CSV and choose UTF-8 as the file origin rather than double-clicking the file.
Can I export just some of the cards?
Yes — the export screen lets you pick cards one by one, or take the whole library in one file. Exporting a single card is free; multi-card exports come with the one-time unlock.