How to Turn Business Cards Into a Contact Spreadsheet
Still have a stack of business cards from conferences? Here's how to get all that contact info into a spreadsheet without typing a single name.
TL;DR:
- 30 business cards = ~5 minutes to photograph + 2 minutes to process and export
- AI extracts name, title, company, email, phone, address from each card
- Export to Google Sheets, then import into any CRM via CSV
The Business Card Problem
You've been to a conference, a networking event, or a series of meetings, and now you have a stack of business cards sitting on your desk. Each one has a name, company, title, email, phone number, and maybe a physical address. Valuable connections, trapped on little rectangles of cardstock.
Typing each card into a spreadsheet or contact management tool is tedious enough that most people just... don't. The cards sit in a drawer, and the connections go cold.
How to Process a Stack in 10 Minutes
1. Photograph each card. One card per photo, on a contrasting background. Make sure it's in frame and in focus. Natural light or a desk lamp works fine. If cards are double-sided, photograph both sides.
2. Upload to Siftly. Batch-upload all the card photos at once.
3. AI extracts the data. Full name, job title, company name, email address, phone number(s), website, and physical address, all separated into the right fields.
4. Export to Google Sheets. Clean contact list ready to use. Import into any CRM, email marketing tool, or contact management system; most accept CSV imports, and Google Sheets exports to CSV with one click.
You've gone from a pile of paper to a usable contact database in under 10 minutes.
Siftly Team
Building tools that turn messy documents into clean, structured data. We write about document automation, data extraction, and smarter workflows for small businesses.