Can scanned business cards be exported to contact lists

[Dr RJ 2]

The new business cardscsanning  feature from Evernote Business could be much more valuable if the contact information automatically updated other user contacts lists, such as MS Outlook or Google Contacts.

This is one of the key benefits entering a new contact into HELLO offers, but the process is quite lengthy from a data entry perspective if one has a group of business cards from an event.

 

Is there a way to do this export that i am not aware of?
Or is there a possibility to add this feature?

 

Does anyone have other solutions?

 

Thanks

 

Dr RJ 

[mcheng 106]

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

[Dr RJ 2]

Thanks, I've found the options you spoke of.

 

Is this functionality coming soon to the Android platform as well?

[kahht 1]

This would be a great feature for Android!!! 

[Christine Perey 1]

Please bring it to Android!

[Molly Cooke 1]

I have activated the "Save contact info to contacts" but my scanned business cards are not sync-ing to Outlook.  Could someone advise?

[pmbanas 16]

Hi,

Is there any update to the export feature. I am able to export my contacts to my Apple contacts, but they get mixed in with personal contacts. It would be ideal if you  created an "export to .csv" or other excel-like format so this info could be used in a database. 

 

thanks!

 

 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

There been no update as of yet. Any update that occurs, I'm sure, will reveal itself on these forums, or bare itself to you when you use the app!

[pmbanas 16]

thanks! I actually meant an update as of timing...it's a much needed feature to really be useful. I'm a new user from the Cardmunch users, and I was used to using their system for updating our email dbs. 

 

Have a great rest of the weekend!

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Ah, I understand. 

 

Either here or the Evernote blog will be the place to see any updates. However, as you will quickly learn, Evernote is rather infamously tight-lipped on their development plans and schedule so most of the time we won't know until it happens or it doesn't!

[Dave Sharkman 0]

I'm just starting to experiment with the Evernote business card scan functionality.  One of the problems I've encountered is that it turns on the LCD flash light to illuminate the business card.  This is probably fine for matte stock paper, but with a glossy surface (as my card was), the LCD flash would reflect onto the scanned card image, creating a white spot in the scan and obliterating portions of the text, reducing the OCR accuracy.

 

I managed to cover my finger over the light (but not the lens), which helped somewhat, but I would prefer if one could either choose to turn off the LCD light and use ambient lighting or just have it off altogether.

 

DRS

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

For glossy cards, rather than obscuring the flash, try holding your phone off axis and at a bit of an angle. Evernote will correct for the tilted aspect.

[Eugenie 1]

I agree that if Evernote Contacts can be exported into CSV so that I can export to Outlook (not using the contact syncing functionality built into my mobile phone), it would be an amazing feature, and business users would be much more likely to use Evernote as contact storage.

[jackwilson 0]

Yes business card scanner is a new device and very helpful now days I am sure.

[Tim Brewer 4]

I agree that if Evernote Contacts can be exported into CSV so that I can export to Outlook (not using the contact syncing functionality built into my mobile phone), it would be an amazing feature, and business users would be much more likely to use Evernote as contact storage.

I agree, we ( at multiple companies) use it to get to LinkedIn which is great but the main use case was getting the data to our CRM via:

-csv export

-drag and drop contact file for outlook/Gmail

-email a contact file like card-munch did as an contact attachment

 

Right now it is a good for LinkedIN but has no value for sales, BD and real list builders, conference attenders or sales pros. Evernote if you are able to solve that for us  it would be hard to ever leave you.....for now it is not enough value in our sales process to not be looking for other solutions.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Tim

[Tim Brewer 4]

Hi,

Is there any update to the export feature. I am able to export my contacts to my Apple contacts, but they get mixed in with personal contacts. It would be ideal if you  created an "export to .csv" or other excel-like format so this info could be used in a database. 

 

thanks!

I agree, we ( at multiple companies) use it to get to LinkedIn which is great but the main use case was getting the data to our CRM via: 

-csv export

-drag and drop contact file for outlook/Gmail

-email a contact file like card-munch did as an contact attachment

 

Right now it is a good for LinkedIN but has no value for sales, BD and real list builders, conference attenders or sales pros.

 

Evernote if you are able to solve that for us it would be hard to ever leave you.....for now it is not enough value in our sales process to not be looking for other solutions.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Tim

[IngridWongWorks 1]

As a freelancer my CRM needs are limited but being able to create a smart database for my contacts is a top priority. I can use my Mac Contacts to create groups bases on Tags I add in the Notes section and then export or mail just that group. Downside: I have to manually add all the data.

I use Evernote to scan my business cards and that works pretty well. What I miss though is:

 

- being able to add fields like Company when it is not recognized by the scan - I can only edit the fields Evernote recognizes

- editing the contact data in Evernote and synchronize again with Contacts to really keep them in Sync - either automatically or manually

- to be able to synchronize the tags from Evernote to Contacts

- to be able to synchronize the notes form both Evernote and Contacts

 

That would really make my CRM wishes come true!

 

 

[ENINVA 0]

Yes, LinkedIn was pretty tight-lipped about the demise of CardMunch. I imagine their poor handling of the situation damaged their credibility as will show up the next time they attempt to launch a similar product. I came to EN Hello at that time. One of the primary reasons I use EN is because it supports every OS/platform I own. At the point where the base functionality differs on every platform and EN essentially attempts to dictate the devices I use, I will move on to the next product. While I understand that forecasting release dates has its problems, a complete lack of information hurts the company more than a missed release date. If I didn't have an extra iPhone laying around the house that I am using for business cards, I would have dumped EN already. In addition to no Android support, the fact that Windows/Mac support requires a >$400 device is ridiculous.

[Crogue 2]

Have to admit. This feature seems great at first but ends up being useless. The scanning, card recognition, pulling info from LinkdIn all works flawlessly. Then, due to the fact that Evernote lacks a proper address book or email system, I'm stuck just looking at notes with pretty contact information that's fundamentally useless. 

I do not want to sync them with my Iphone contacts because I don't want them to mingle with my phones personal contacts. That'll just create a mess. I'm actually left manually inputting them which is the problem this was supposed to solve in the first place. 

[MichelleMjoy 1]

thanks! I actually meant an update as of timing...it's a much needed feature to really be useful. I'm a new user from the Cardmunch users, and I was used to using their system for updating our email dbs. 

 

Have a great rest of the weekend!

I'm a new user from Card Munch also and was trying to export contacts so I can sun with my email marketing program. Because it only allows in .enex or html, I am unable to do so. I don't want to look for another alternative, but it looks like I may have to only because it does not export into csv. Any updates if that may be in the works for Evernote?

[Myrhillion 0]

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

 

I'm not finding this setting.  I'm using an iphone 5s, and a macbook pro together.   I'm assuming the setting is on the iphone, but not finding it.  Can you give some step-by-step for enabling "Save to Contacts"?

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

 

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

 

I'm not finding this setting.  I'm using an iphone 5s, and a macbook pro together.   I'm assuming the setting is on the iphone, but not finding it.  Can you give some step-by-step for enabling "Save to Contacts"?

 

In Evernote on your iPhone, make sure you are in the Evernote home screen (with your username in the top left).

1) Tap your username to enter settings. (Your name, preceded by a small gear icon).

2) Tap on word "General" around the bottom of the display (in the middle of the Settings screen).

3) Tap on "Camera"

4) Tap on "Business Cards"

5) Toggle the "Save To Contacts" switch so it is "ON" which will result in automatically saving every scanned business card to your device's Contacts. 

[Myrhillion 0]

Thank you!  Spot on, thanks for helping me navigate!

[TomDC 0]

I agree that if Evernote Contacts can be exported into CSV so that I can export to Outlook (not using the contact syncing functionality built into my mobile phone), it would be an amazing feature, and business users would be much more likely to use Evernote as contact storage.

I've not experimented with this feature, and was reading here to learn more before I do. My phone contacts are synced to Outlook already, so getting it into my phone should get it to outlook. However, I do flag personal and business contacts in Outlook, and at times have then exported some business contacts from Outlook to another CRM (and deleted them from Outlook). I'm a sole proprietor, so some mixing of these contacts is not a problem for me.

 

I'm wondering if there is some option to categorize or otherwise flag the contacts coming out of Evernote. That would give me the option of deciding how to handle them in Outlook, but all the data would be there. For those who are looking for a CSV option, passing it through Outlook would be pretty painless, I would think.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

 

I agree that if Evernote Contacts can be exported into CSV so that I can export to Outlook (not using the contact syncing functionality built into my mobile phone), it would be an amazing feature, and business users would be much more likely to use Evernote as contact storage.

I've not experimented with this feature, and was reading here to learn more before I do. My phone contacts are synced to Outlook already, so getting it into my phone should get it to outlook. However, I do flag personal and business contacts in Outlook, and at times have then exported some business contacts from Outlook to another CRM (and deleted them from Outlook). I'm a sole proprietor, so some mixing of these contacts is not a problem for me.

 

I'm wondering if there is some option to categorize or otherwise flag the contacts coming out of Evernote. That would give me the option of deciding how to handle them in Outlook, but all the data would be there. For those who are looking for a CSV option, passing it through Outlook would be pretty painless, I would think.

 

There's no way within Evernote to flag a contact one way or another (You could tag a contact, but that's really only relevant within Evernote). You'd have to do any grouping/categorizing/flagging in your Contacts application after it was exported. 

[ENINVA 0]

Uh, no it isn't "pretty painless" to pass it through Outlook which is why we have this thread. I've tried using the iPhone app to export to contacts which sync with Google which syncs with Outlook. So far, no joy. I really don't understand what it is taking this long to get the business card camera working in Android and the export to contacts available either in the Android app or the one of the desktop apps. Not trying to pick a fight, but the suggest of a simple solution is a little arrogant considering folks in the thread have been at it 8 months.

[TomDC 0]

Uh, no it isn't "pretty painless" to pass it through Outlook which is why we have this thread. I've tried using the iPhone app to export to contacts which sync with Google which syncs with Outlook. So far, no joy. I really don't understand what it is taking this long to get the business card camera working in Android and the export to contacts available either in the Android app or the one of the desktop apps. Not trying to pick a fight, but the suggest of a simple solution is a little arrogant considering folks in the thread have been at it 8 months.

 

My apologies if I came across as arrogant. That wasn't my intention. I fully agree with what I interpret as the gist of this thread, that there should be an easy way to export these contacts through an external file. I was referencing Outlook specifically, and noted that for me, that's the contact file on my iPhone. Anything added there is synced to Exchange and my other devices. Sometimes when I add a contact directly into my phone (at a conference or meeting) I mark them so I can easily grab them in Outlook back at the office in case I'd prefer them in a different contact file. They go into their own folder and I export that folder. I was just imagining I could do that with this application if there is indeed someway to flag them in the Evernote process.  As I said, I've not used this feature since as a sole proprietor I'm on the Premium, not Business subscription. Unless I'm mistaken, that's not an option in Premium, so part of my reading of this thread is to help decide if this would be worth the added cost to upgrade. Sounds like maybe not.

 

Again my apologies if my post came across differently.

[pmbanas 16]

Loving Internet 3.0 where everyone apologizes for any inferred meaning or criticism. Seriously, it's a breath of fresh air!

 

That said, I agree that it's frustrating after having been moved from CardMunch with a "free" plan to still be stuck with no way to use the contacts I spent so much time saving to the CardMunch cloud. 

 

Crickets, what say you? Any timing we can keep in the back of our brains?

 

Thanks!

[K. Brinkley 0]

Does this feature only work for new scans? I enabled it but it doesn't seem to be picking up previous scans.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

You have to manually add old scans. On your Mac, this can be done in bulk by right-click on the note/notes (if you selected several at once), select Share>send to contacts

 

on iOS, this has to be done one contact note at a time. 

[pmbanas 16]

but back to when Evernote will let us free our contacts with a export to .csv function. My contacts are trapped inside Evernote and want to get out!

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

but back to when Evernote will let us free our contacts with a export to .csv function. My contacts are trapped inside Evernote and want to get out!

Once you've exported your contacts to your computer's Contacts application which is a fairly easy process, THAT application should allow you to export in .csv. 

 

Not baked into Evernote, not elegant, but not impossible!

[ENINVA 0]

Having tried it, it is not a "fairly easy process". I export my contacts from the iPhone version of EN to my contacts, yet those contacts don't sync with gmail/google contacts. It would be greatly appreciated if you would share how you've *done* it. This thread is looking strikingly similar to the threads from LinkedIn/CardMunch with:

 

1) No progress

2) No official or even semi-official communication from the company on a fix (although Scott's participation is appreciated, at least he acknowledges the issue)

 

So, like we did there, if you are aware of a viable alternative please share. Even when all of the current functionality is working EN is not that great as a contact manager. It seems like it is not a priority for EN, just as it was not for LI. I really can't afford to waste my time with such a product. I will pay for an app that works and is compatible with Android and OS X. Thanks.

[pmbanas 16]

I guess all we can do is continue to gripe and refute the idea that export to Apple's address book is really a solution. That's fine if you're scanning Uncle Joe's card at Thanksgiving dinner, but not when you've come back from a conference with 100 cards you don't want to mix in with family and friends. Can you imagine what that would be like to then have to scrub, not to mention cleaning the biz contacts out of your personal address book when you're done. At that point, it's easier to enter them all in an excel.

[ENINVA 0]

I can imagine, which is one reason why this is such an issue. In an effort to solve my own problem, I did some googling and found a couple of alternatives. As I type, I am playing with CamCard. They have apps for Android and iOS (free and .99) as well as a web app. Editing actually works consistently across Android and web as does the camera and it syncs to many contact managers. You can export to VCF and CSV as well. While I generally opt for fewer apps, this is important enough that I am not going to compromise on functionality. This was one of my motivations for upgrading to EN premium. If folks are interested, I will report back after a week of use. So far, it looks like it will work for me.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Having tried it, it is not a "fairly easy process". I export my contacts from the iPhone version of EN to my contacts, yet those contacts don't sync with gmail/google contacts. It would be greatly appreciated if you would share how you've *done* it.

I have my iOS contacts sync with iCloud, but you could just as easily use google. This will deposit them fairly immediately onto your desktop Contacts application. 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

I guess all we can do is continue to gripe and refute the idea that export to Apple's address book is really a solution. That's fine if you're scanning Uncle Joe's card at Thanksgiving dinner, but not when you've come back from a conference with 100 cards you don't want to mix in with family and friends. Can you imagine what that would be like to then have to scrub, not to mention cleaning the biz contacts out of your personal address book when you're done. At that point, it's easier to enter them all in an excel.

To be perfectly honest, if this were my use case, I'd get a proper CRM application rather than shoehorn Evernote into a job is doesn't terribly well. (You will notice that I AGREE with you. I agree that Evernote does not handle this task well, that Apple's Contacts application ISN'T a solution)

[ENINVA 0]

From the other EN-related apps in the appstore, it seems that EN is trying to support a PaaS (Platform as a Service) model, maybe similar to Salesforce. This seems brilliant and so the best outcome might be a PaaS application built on the EN engine by a third party. Why, because many of us like EN and prefer fewer rather than more apps. I suspect you would not be seeing most of this had LinkedIn not forced us into a transition to an application that was clearly not ready to deliver similar or improved capability. At this point, EN should either spin it off or deliver a Cardmunch-like or Cardmunch-lite application and call it a day. What they should not do is keep jacking around with no indication of their intent or schedule. That will encourage me to drop my premium membership as well.

[pmbanas 16]

Thanks for being candid Scott. I guess what frosts us Cardmunch people is that we had a service that worked well. But like so often happens, a bigger company bought it, killed it, and brought us in to Evernote with the promise that it would be better for us. Now all my data is in Evernote...do I find another CRM and re-scan all those cards. You can imagine why we keeping hoping EN will step up, which I guess is unlikely.  Still, I don't see how Evernote can really survive even as a consumer company if people realize that it's "data in and data never gets out." 

 

Have a good mid-week.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Thanks for being candid Scott. I guess what frosts us Cardmunch people is that we had a service that worked well. But like so often happens, a bigger company bought it, killed it, and brought us in to Evernote with the promise that it would be better for us. Now all my data is in Evernote...do I find another CRM and re-scan all those cards. You can imagine why we keeping hoping EN will step up, which I guess is unlikely.  Still, I don't see how Evernote can really survive even as a consumer company if people realize that it's "data in and data never gets out." 

 

Have a good mid-week.

That is a very good point. I never had a need for a full-blown CRM, or CardMunch specifically, and I often lose sight of what that transition might have been like for former CM users, such as losing certain critical features. 

 

As for the "data gets in but never gets out" statement, I'm not exactly what Evernote could do to facilitate this more than it already does for their data in general. Data can always be exported in a reasonably generic format (HTML) or in a relatively proprietary format (enex). HTML isn't necessarily elegantly easy to use, but it is reasonably portable, and is about as generic as you could get for content that isn't entirely plain-text. There have been calls for the ability to export data in many other formats (PDF, Word, etc), but to me that doesn't really contribute much to the portability issue, since those formats aren't terribly portable. (This has been discussed a great deal elsewhere and many people aren't satisfied with the current options... but whatever). 

 

Now, if you are referring specifically to contact cards, then I agree. The form of these doesn't vary a great deal (always the same fields, very specific parameters for contents, formatting is identical across ALL contact cards), then there could definitely be some improvements. A direct means for exporting .csv would be a big one. Obviously .csv or even plain text wouldn't work for non-contact-card notes. 

[pmbanas 16]

Hi Scott, 

Interesting that "portability" would be the main benefit. I'm probably showing my age (or maybe just my publishing orientation), but for me, I am constantly moving things into PDF, Word, Excel, .jpg and traditional and still versatile formats. While I like cross-platform versatility, it would be key for me to save something in Evernote and then be able to extract when I want to copy/paste in some other place. Perhaps that's why I wasn't an EN user until Cardmunch moved me over. I was actually kind of jazzed to see what the fuss was all about. Obviously, there's a place for EN and I don't mean to trash it, it's just not a good solution for me apparently.

[ENINVA 0]

As it seems we are admiring a problem that EN has no intent to solve, I am dropping off this thread. I will do a one-time export of my contacts from EN and be done with it. Hopefully CamCard will work out. So far so good. Once I am through with that, I am going to relook my need for a premium EN account. Taking on new customers only to ignore them is dumb business. Kind of like holding a Grand Opening and then not turning on the lights and unlocking the door. Keep your resume up to date Scott because if this is an EN trend, they are ripe for disruption. You've done a good job here in attempting to mitigate corporate dumbness. Cheers.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Keep your resume up to date Scott because if this is an EN trend, they are ripe for disruption. You've done a good job here in attempting to mitigate corporate dumbness. Cheers.

This is a deeply puzzling post. My employment is entirely unrelated to Evernote... 

[transcendcoach 0]

I scanned business cards into Evernote this week, before I saw that you had to set up "add to contacts" to get it to sync.  Now that they are all scanned, can I get them to sync with contacts?

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

 

I scanned business cards into Evernote this week, before I saw that you had to set up "add to contacts" to get it to sync.  Now that they are all scanned, can I get them to sync with contacts?

 

Yes. As I posted earlier in this thread: 

You have to manually add old scans. On your Mac, this can be done in bulk by right-click on the note/notes (if you selected several at once), select Share>send to contacts

 

on iOS, this has to be done one contact note at a time. 

 

on iOS, for each contact card, you tap the three dots (the "more" button), and select the appropriate option. 

[Marcos Valle 0]

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

 

THANK YOU! I was going crazy looking for this on the internet!

[K. Brinkley 0]

I was able to get the biz card scan over to Contacts on my Mac. However, the mapping from EN to Contacts seems wrong. For example, both First Name and Last Name in EN are sent to the First Name field in Contacts. Am I missing something? Thanks in advance!

 

Forgive me if I have missed a prior post on this topic.

[Michelle Villalobos 0]

I just snapped a whole bunch of business cards of people who requested to be on my mailing list after a speaking engagement, and didn't for a minute even consider the possibility that I wouldn't be able to export these as a CSV so I could import to Constant Contact. Seriously? There's no way to do this? That is probably one of the most basic items of functionality that any contact manager/scanner needs. 

[pmbanas 16]

Thanks for joining in Michelle. Only hope is that Evernote will get the idea if 100 of thousands of us join this forum and add to the comments!  Otherwise, it doesn't sound hopeful. I do really like the LinkedIn part though, which was I was a big user of CardMunch. However, using two scanners, one to do LinkedIn and one so I can actually USE my contacts would be a bit much. 

[Dan Agudo 1]

Now that all my new contacts taken with Evernote on my iPhone 5 are saved to Contacts on the iPhone, how can I get them to sync with Gmail Contacts, which is my primary contacts base?  That used to work when I used CardMunch, but not now.

From prior postings, it appears others asked the same question, but I couldn't find the answer.  Help apprecited. 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Now that all my new contacts taken with Evernote on my iPhone 5 are saved to Contacts on the iPhone, how can I get them to sync with Gmail Contacts, which is my primary contacts base?  That used to work when I used CardMunch, but not now.

From prior postings, it appears others asked the same question, but I couldn't find the answer.  Help apprecited. 

If you sync your iPhone contacts with Google, then saving your Evernote contacts to your iPhone ckntacts as you have done, should result in them being pushed up to googles servers, just like if you manually entered a new contact in the contacts application.

If you do not sync your iPhone contacts with Google, then you would have to set that up and it should merge your two lists upon the initial sync.

[elsatch 0]

I would also like to upvote this issue. I can not conceive a serious business card software that doesn't allow me to export in a neutral standard format like vCard o CSV. Any other "solution" like messing my computer/phone contacts can't be taken seriously. Ever heard about data protection policies?

[jkhewett 0]

I too wish that there was a way to export the contents so that I could decide how to use it further.  The main issue I'm having however is that only the name / title / company name are syncing to contacts.  The address, phone, email are not.  Thus making this entire process useless.

 

What am I doing wrong?

 

[Pablopilot 1]

The "feature" that lets you scan business cards into EN is really a fake-out, a non-feature, since the scanned cards cannot be used in any normal way one might use them or exported to a program that can.  Its just data clutter.  Seriously, does anyone from EN care to respond to this?

[pmbanas 16]

It's a notes keeper, it's a roach motel!  The cards go in and they can't come out!

 

We're all hoping this is just an oversight rather than a nefarious plan to keep their users forever. However, there is a reason the product is called Evernote, I fear. I don't know if anyone in the company reads this board - maybe we should tweet our concern.

[Pablopilot 1]

I wouldn't mind the roach motel aspect nearly as much if EN had any management features built in.  Hell, I'd use it as a contact manager if it had normal, routine features in that regard.  but what is the point of spending time scanning, and correcting, business cards if they are then useless?!?!

[pmbanas 16]

What if there was an app for all hoarders. It allowed you to put stuff forever in a sealed room. You'd never retrieve it but at least you would know it was safe. Maybe that's who it's for?

[Janette S. 1]

I have activated the "Save contact info to contacts" but my scanned business cards are not sync-ing to Outlook.  Could someone advise?

I am having the same problem as Ms. Cooke. I have tons of business cards already "scanned" into Evernote via the app but how do I take those and transfer them into the iCloud? The ones I've done since I corrected the  "save contact info to contacts" switch have appeared in my contacts but not the ones prior. Is there a way to do this? If I missed a prior post on this I'm sorry!

[BDBowen 0]

Is there a way to add fields that don't get picked up when taking a picture of the business card?  For instance, I get a good picture of business card but it does not create/populate a field for the address that is displayed on the business card.  While I am reviewing/editing what is captured, is there a way to insert an address field or any other missing information as I am editing the data?  I am using an Android phone.

[timple 0]

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

 

I am using Evernote for Android on my Nexus 7. When I go to camera - settings - there is NO toggle to "save business cards to contacts". Is this an iOS feature only? (Like wise on the PC version of Evernote there does not appear to be a save to contacts option as apparently there is on the Mac.

[mcheng 106]

 

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

 

I am using Evernote for Android on my Nexus 7. When I go to camera - settings - there is NO toggle to "save business cards to contacts". Is this an iOS feature only? (Like wise on the PC version of Evernote there does not appear to be a save to contacts option as apparently there is on the Mac.

 

 

This was low on the list of features for the Android launch.  I'll speak to our Android PM to get this added back in.

[crablouis 2]

Android, Windows, Linux (when that version happens, ha ha), all need Save to Contacts. 

Thanks for any help in getting this feature implemented.

 

---------------------------

 

FOLLOWUP:

I have found that, although I am not seeing a Save to Contacts option in Camera|Business Cards, there is a "save to contacts" option presented when you take a card photo. It allows us to send the card OCR information to Contacts. Nice.

[JIm Adgate 0]

Seeing this discussion thread, I suspect the answer to my question for whether this can be done on Android is "upgrade to premium".     Not sure I like that.   I'm using the free version and want to export scanned biz card contacts to Outlook via my phone which syncs between google and Office 365/Outlook.    There is no way to do this under "Camera" settings that I can see, there is a menu presented when you first scan the card, but that means I'll have to go back and re-scan the card.

 

I will say this, the scanning engine in Evernote is much better than in CamCard, which is a real POS and total waste of time, might as well type it in manually.

 

Jim

 

[jcbdigger 0]

Evernote newbie testing business card scanning on Android, this looks like the right thread to post this question.

 

I have got the Business Card scanning working, I have linked Evernote to my LinkedIn account and the scanning appears to all work fine except that a scanned contact's picture (found via LinkedIn) does not transfer to the saved contact record when I use 'Add to Contacts'.

 

Is this a bug, a known limitation or something you only get if you upgrade to Premium?

 

Thanks

[don shin 0]

I just learned it and tested. It works great to my iphone6 and gmail contact. However, I have one question, do I have an option to correct wrong OCR and add note before synching it with Gmail? I found that I have to edit it twice once it's syched.

[don shin 0]

I just learned it and tested. It works great to my iphone6 and gmail contact. However, I have one question, do I have an option to correct wrong OCR and add note before synching it with Gmail? I found that I have to edit it twice once it's syched.

[pmbanas 16]

Has anyone heard of an update to let us export contacts to .csv or or other format. I need to put my biz contacts into a database for later updates.  Thanks!

[JRSew 0]

Sure doesn't look to me like the business card feature is working

I've chosen save to contacts, also to a folder I created (Contacts) - I don't see anything either in evernote or in ios contacts after i go through the business card scanning process

Would really be nice to have this working in Evernote, seems very odd this is not working - should eb flawless

[mcheng 106]

Hi JRSew

 

If you are running 7.7.4 of the iOS client, there was a bug with saving business cards that slipped into the most recent release.  We have a fix already and its in Apple's hands waiting for approval.  Hopefully it will be approved and released in a week or so.  

 

If you aren't running this version, please submit a bug to support and we will gather more data to diagnose the problem

 

Sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Thanks

[mcheng 106]

Apple approved and we released 7.7.5 a few hours ago with a fix to the biz card saving problem.  Please update to the latest version of the iOS client.

 

Thanks.

[phils 220]

See this forum post for a solution to the request to export Evernote Contact info to CSV.

[solidsn2004 0]

Hi guys,

 

I had downloaded evernote about 3 years ago and used it for like a month for an exhibition I had to attend with my company and I needed to save business cards. I am now working on a different company and we have so many business cards that we need to scan and place in evernote.

My question is: is there a way to export these cards in a csv form in order to place names and email addresses to mailchimp?

 

I am using a mac and I noticed through the iphone 6 there is the option of saving business cards to contacts but there is no such option on my mac. The problem is that there are more contacts on my iphone contact list that I don't need to add them all to the same list. Is there a way to add different contact list with only the business cards I need?

 

I want to get the premium account but I need to know if I can achieve this before I proceed with a purchase.

 

Thanks in advance.

[mcheng 106]

There is no way to explicitly export Evernote notes to .csv format but here is a workaround from the Apple forums.

 

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6007355

 

Hope this helps.

[pmbanas 16]

That is so insane. I'd think any product that purports to organize all your digital stuff in one place would make it s a bit easier to get it out. The problem with a lot of these workarounds is that you have to import all your contacts into your address book before you can use them another way. My address book is for my close personal and work contacts and not a general database.

[penguin1234 1]

 

 

I scanned business cards into Evernote this week, before I saw that you had to set up "add to contacts" to get it to sync.  Now that they are all scanned, can I get them to sync with contacts?

 

Yes. As I posted earlier in this thread: 

You have to manually add old scans. On your Mac, this can be done in bulk by right-click on the note/notes (if you selected several at once), select Share>send to contacts

 

on iOS, this has to be done one contact note at a time. 

 

on iOS, for each contact card, you tap the three dots (the "more" button), and select the appropriate option. 

 

Does anyone know how I can do this in Windows?  I have about 2,000 scanned business cards, saved as PDFs, and I'd like to find some way to get them into a structured database.  I'm not seeing anything like this in my version of Evernote Premium.  To be as clear as I can, I scanned all these cards as PDFs, and imported them into Evernote using the import folder procedure.   Many thanks.

[phils 220]

If they had been scanned directly into Evernote as "business card notes", then you could use the utility I wrote to export them to a CSV file.  But it sounds like they are in Evernote just as "plain vanilla PDF" notes, so they won't be recognized as business cards.

[Jeroen Wooning 0]

Is there a csv export solution yet?

Or another way to get them in our Pipedrive CRM?

[jaakl 0]

I found following path with my mac (phils, your utility is win only):

 

1. make sure you have default contacts account with no contacts (for your Contacts app)

2. in the evernote app selected all contacts, selected Share->More Sharing -> Save to Contacts. Now I have them in my contact account.

3. Go to Contacts app, select all contacts you need, Export them as VCF file. There no contact filtering in Mac default Contacts app, so empty account helps a lot.

4. Use http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/to convert VCF to CSV

5. Imported to Excel, rearranged fields as my CRM needs

6. Imported CSV to CRM

[Jeroen Wooning 0]

Thanks jaakl, I will try

[phils 220]

Hi Jeroen,

 

See the link in the message just above yours - it links to my utility that does CSV exporting (if you're on Windows, as jaaki said).

[pmbanas 16]

My contacts are trapped in Evernote! Please set them free!

[phils 220]

@pmbanas - Are you on Windows or Mac?  Are these contact notes that you created, or they are from scanned-in business cards?

[pmbanas 16]

I'm on Mac. These are scanned-in biz cards. I'm a legacy CardMunch user brought into the Evernote fold.

[phils 220]

Ahh, sorry about that - you've probably already seen mention of my ContactExporter utility above, but it's a Windows app.

[dagbo 16]

 

 

I scanned business cards into Evernote this week, before I saw that you had to set up "add to contacts" to get it to sync.  Now that they are all scanned, can I get them to sync with contacts?

 

Yes. As I posted earlier in this thread: 

You have to manually add old scans. On your Mac, this can be done in bulk by right-click on the note/notes (if you selected several at once), select Share>send to contacts

 

on iOS, this has to be done one contact note at a time. 

 

on iOS, for each contact card, you tap the three dots (the "more" button), and select the appropriate option. 

 

 

 

Great stuff Scott, thanks so much. This saved me a lot of time!

 

Regards

Darren

[NewUser201509 1]

On 1/23/2014 at 11:20 AM, mcheng said:

Hi,

 

Both Evernote and Hello have the same save to Contacts feature.  In Evernote there is a section for Business Card settings under Camera Settings.  Within that group there is a Save to Contacts switch which is OFF by default.  If you turn it on, every card that you scan from that point forward will have the contact information saved to your default Contacts account on your device.  From there if you have your device Contacts synchronized with Google, Outlook or iCloud , they will go to your other devices.

 

We are working on a manual save command for users that prefer to selectively save their scanned cards to Contacts.

Has this "Save to Contacts switch" been removed. I am not finding it in EN on the Android device? It only allows me to select a default EN Notebook into which scanned cards will be saved. (I have a "Contacts" notebook in EN, but don't recall if I created that folder or if it was pre-loaded with EN.)

[JohnDavis 5]

Hi All -

I ran into the same problem and coded-up a quick script that converts Evernote HTML into CSV. 

Essentially, if you export your business cards into HTML, my script will scrape the HTML and create a CSV files containing your contacts. It isn't perfect, but it is better than what Evernote provides 

Script is in Python and available here:

https://github.com/davisjp1822/enbc2csv

I hope it helps!

[EvelynD. 0]

On 4/24/2016 at 3:34 PM, JohnDavis said:

Hi All -

I ran into the same problem and coded-up a quick script that converts Evernote HTML into CSV. 

Essentially, if you export your business cards into HTML, my script will scrape the HTML and create a CSV files containing your contacts. It isn't perfect, but it is better than what Evernote provides 

Script is in Python and available here:

https://github.com/davisjp1822/enbc2csv

I hope it helps!

Hi John,

We need help using this program, my partner and I have been attempting to resolve exporting the emails retrieved from scanning our business cards into evernote. If you could help move us forward, we'd be so grateful.

Best,

Shane and Evelyn

[Shwu Lin 1]

Do you know if there's a way to sync updates made to a Business card in Evernote, back to iPhone contacts (Exchange)? I have saved a contact to Contacts and then when I make a change in Evernote, I can't get it to update the one in Contacts. It either duplicates the contact, or it might find the same contact but duplicates the phone numbers and doesn't update the address. Also do you know if there's a way to sync a Business Card with LinkedIn after it's in Evernote? I scanned a card and had to clean some of the information up (name and email address) so it couldn't link the 2 in Scannable and now it's in Evernote I can't see how to get it to find the LinkedIn profile (for a person I'm connected to).

[Mark Ang 0]

Hi. I'm using Android and my girlfriend is using iPhone. She scans the business cards and sync to my Evernote, so I can see the cards in Android. And I'm meeting the same problem :  how to add the scanned business cards into my Gmail account? Well, there are something really strange, every now and then I can see the button of "adding to Contacts", but most of the time the button is missing. I don't know what happened? Or what happens? Why is it not a constant function? But I can see that in the desktop version of Evernote, I can find the button in the "sharing" list. 

Evernote is a good software except for the contact sync problem. 

[Leo Salazar 0]

I'm a Premium subscriber and this is the end of 2016 and I'm STILL waiting for an automatic sync of my Evernote business card scan to Google contacts through my Android. 

Why are we still waiting for this?!! 

[kahht 1]

O my gosh! I just scanned a card with my Android phone and after checking all the info in my Evernote App and clicked save it prompted me to Add To Contacts!!! Amazing. Thank you.

[Leo Salazar 0]

Seriously? What phone are you using? I've got an HTC, but it only saves to the phone and doesn't sync to Google contacts. 

Am I doing something wrong? 

 

 

[DiWo 0]

Coming back on the automatic business to contact function. This has been available on IOS but not Android. Basically I want to take a picture of a business card and have the details straight imported into my contacts (eg Google contacts). I have evernote business and use Android. 

Several other users have asked for this some time ago - when is this coming?

[Verbal 0]

Been waiting for this feature to upgrade since 2014. Super disappointed that it hasn't been sorted yet. Even if it's not possible to add a direct-to-contact-list feature for Android, allowing business card contacts to be exportable to a .csv file would be stellar. Any news on when this will happen, Evernote? There's obviously demand/interest from your clientele. The failure to provide this feature is definitely preventing me from using Evernote for this purpose (as I'm sure it is for many others). Cheers!

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 2,906]

The current version of the app does offer adding info to Google contacts after a card has been scanned (though not for previously scanned cards, I think), at least on my Samsung phone running Android 8. What version of Evernote do you have?

BTW, these are mainly user-to-user forums; Evernote staff drop in sometimes, but you're not addressing them directly here.