If you have a bunch of contacts in your email or personal assistant software and you'd like to get them on your Android phone, there are a couple of ways to do it.

The "stock" method is to use GMail Contacts sync. Any contacts you add in GMail (or that Google adds for you) will magically sync to your phone (and vice versa) if you have auto-sync turned on. (You can control which GMail Contact groups to sync in your Android settings.) You can also import contacts into GMail and then sync them with your phone.

But what if you don't want to use GMail Contacts? For example, we have a fifteen or twenty year old homegrown contact management app/database with thousands of companies and contacts. I didn't want all that exposed to Google.

The better solution is to use Vcard export/import.

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Most email and PDA type programs have a Vcard export function. (Our app didn't because it was written before Vcards, so I wrote one. Here's the spec if you need to roll your own.)

Simply export your contacts as Vcards. Then copy the .VCF file(s) to your phone storage via USB, go to your Android Contacts, select Manage Contacts from the menu menu (or Import/Export contacts), select import from SD card (or whatever option you are presented), and Bob's your uncle. Once you're done, delete the VCF files from your phone storage.

You can also use this method to import and combine contacts from multiple sources. Just remember to delete the previous import files.

Tip: If your email/PDA outputs individual files for each contact instead of putting them all in one big file, put them in a folder and copy the folder to your phone storage to keep things tidy. Android will find them.

Tip 2: Some versions of the Android Contacts app will let you specify which account to import contacts into. Import into a "system" or "phone" account if you don't want them synced to GMail. If your only option is to import to a GMail account, turn off auto-syncing if you don't want them uploaded to the Google.

Tip 3: Be careful about importing contacts with sensitive info such as logins/passwords, bank account numbers, SSNs, etc. Rogue applications could access your contact info, or your phone could get lost or stolen and fall into the wrong hands.

UPDATE: I generalized the Vcard converter I wrote to work with a generic CSV file of contacts as input, in case it might be useful to someone. It will convert a CSV file to a VCF Vcard file suitable for import to most programs. (Tested with Windows Live Mail and GMail Contacts.) Windows only. Source included. See readme.txt for more info. Download...