Here’s the thing: phones are built to read contact formats, not spreadsheets. Excel files like XLS or XLSX are flexible by design. Columns can be renamed, cells can be merged, and phone numbers may be stored as formulas or text. Mobile operating systems expect a strict structure, so when they encounter Excel data, they simply don’t know how to interpret it.

That’s why people usually convert Excel files into VCF first. An Excel to VCF Converter restructures rows into standardized contact fields that phones already understand. Tools such as Softaken Excel to VCF Converter exist because they translate spreadsheet data into a device-friendly format instead of forcing phones to guess.