There are different versions of the vCard format that various applications can export vCards in. Likewise, there are different file encodings that various applications can use when exporting vCard files. The different vCard formats and file encodings can make importing vCards a little tricky. The below information is meant to help in this regard.
1) SOHO Organizer only imports and exports in the version 3 vCard format.
2) SOHO Organizer exports vCard files in the UTF-8 encoding. If the vCard contains non-ASCII characters, then it exports as UTF-16 with a BOM (see below for a description of BOM).
3) SOHO Organizer expects vCard import files to have a ".vcf" file extension.
4) SOHO Organizer can import a vCard file saved in almost any encoding and will actually ask you what encoding it should use when importing the file. It has to ask you this question because not all vCard files specify in their BOM (Build of Materials) the encoding used.
HELPFUL TIDBITS. The following tidbits of information have not been fully verified but we believe that they are accurate. This information can change at any time as other manufacturers update their products.
a) As best as we can tell, Apple's Address Book exports using the UTF-8 encoding.
b) As best as we can tell, Apple's Address Book exports in either the version 2.1 or version 3 vCard formats depending upon the preference setting (version 3 is the default).
c) As best as we can tell, Apple's Address Book can import version 1.0, 2.1, and 3 vCard formats.
d) As best as we can recall, the Palm Desktop software exports using the version 1.0 vCard format.
e) As best as we can tell, older versions of Apple's Address Book (Tiger & earlier, maybe Leopard) actually used UTF-16 with no BOM for vCards with non-ASCII characters and ASCII for vCards with only ASCII characters.
f) If you have a vCard file that uses a vCard format or file encoding that SOHO Organizer does not support, you can sometimes first import the file into Address Book and then export it from Address Book in a format that is compatible with SOHO Organizer. There may be other utilities that can convert between vCard formats and file encodings.