Last month I blogged about migrating SMS messages from an iPhone to an Android handset. I ignored my contacts because I figured that Active Sync would do that for me – and it does, except that my Galaxy S3 Mini is subject to mobile device management policies and we use the TouchDown client for ActiveSync access to Exchange so that’s where the contacts end up.  Whilst TouchDown can export contacts to the phone book on the device, I only found that after I’d migrated them a different way, so I thought I’d write a quick post about the options.

Many Android users will be GMail users.  If you fall into that camp then it’s pretty easy – sync to Google Contacts via iTunes.  An alternative (regardless of whether you use GMail) is to export the contacts from iCloud as a vCard (.VCF file).  This can be imported to various places – including GMail – or, as I did, directly on my Android handset.  The hongkiat.com post on transferring iPhone contacts to Android uses a Google account to sync the contacts onto the device. I elected to use Dropbox to get the .VCF file into the local storage on my phone, then imported the contacts from there, using the Import/Export option in the Options menu in my contact list.