8 Methods to Scan Business Cards to Excel (Free Included)

When attending business parties or other formal occasions, people usually exchange their business cards to get to know each other quickly. These business cards typically bear basic information about the givers, including their name, company, contact information, etc.

But as time goes by, you have stored a stack of business cards in hand. It becomes a tricky problem to find someone’s contact among them, and you may even have lost several cards by mistake.

Therefore, to manage business cards in a more efficient and organized way, we are increasingly preferring to scan them in digital format and export all the contact database in Excel spreadsheet.

In this article, we will introduce the best apps and free apps to scan business card to Excel with ease, also demonstrate how to scan your cards into Excel with online free tools.

 

How to Choose the Best Business Card Scanner to Excel?

Various factors should be considered when we choose an optimal app to scan business cards to excel. It may be up to your budget, frequency of scanning, OCR accuracy and so on. Here’s some criteria I used when I was testing a list of business card scanners to excel on the market.

1. Price: Most people looked for free options to scan business cards to excel initially, but few can achieve satisfactory results. Eventually, they have to turn to paid products. But the prices vary widely among different applications. It is best to choose one that offers a free trial period, so you can give it a shot to decide whether it is worth the cost.
2. OCR accuracy: In the process of scanning paper business cards to digital Excel file, OCR is required, which is applied to recognize texts from image-based/scanned files. Therefore, it is essential to make sure that the OCR result of software is accurate, for instance, check whether the name, contact details, address and other important information are extracted by the program correctly.
3. Conversion speed: In daily work, efficiency is often the top priority. Imagine you’re scanning a business card into an Excel file, how annoying it would be if it took you lots of time and effort and even caused delays to your other work. Therefore, you need a relatively lightweight tool that can run the program quickly and perform tasks very smoothly.
4. Ease of use: A good business card scanner to Excel should also simplify your workflow, with an easy-to-use and organized interface, so you have no need to spend much time familiarizing yourself with the software.

 

Best Apps to Scan Business Cards to Excel on Windows and Mac

Basing on the criteria mentioned above, here we've picked the best apps to scan business cards to excel on Mac, Windows and even on your mobile devices.

#1 Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

It is a Windows and macOS OCR converter to turn native PDF, image-based and scanned files into editable formats, including Excel spreadsheet. It can recognize texts from one or multiple business cards at one time, then save the information in Excel, CSV, Word, PowerPoint, Text and other editable formats. No matter what language the business card is in, Cisdem PDF Converter OCR can accurately read it.

With its advanced OCR feature, you can export part of the business card as Table, while other parts as Text or Image.

How to Scan Business Cards to Excel on Windows or Mac?

1. Take pictures of the business cards with the camera on your phone or desktop, save the photos on your device.
2. Download and install Cisdem PDF Converter OCR on your computer.
   Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.14 or later
3. Run the program, drag and drop your business card images into the Converter interface.
4. Choose to XLSX or to CSV from the output format list. Hit the Gear icon, you can make the adjustments to the exported file. Besides, select an OCR language to recognize.
5. When you’ve done everything, click Convert to scan these business cards to Excel or CSV.

#2 ABBYY FineReader PDF

Talking about OCR solution, ABBYY FineReader leads in this field. In fact, it offers business card reader to scan and OCR business cards into your contacts, however it doesn’t support scan to excel format, we will need its desktop product ABBYY FineReader PDF to scan your business cards to Excel.

ABBYY FineReader PDF for Windows or Mac is more than a PDF editor, it helps to scan and OCR business cards to MS office or other formats too. It can import a scan from a scanner, then perform OCR on the file, you will be able to edit the scanned file, export as Excel or other formats.

How to Scan Business Cards to Excel on Windows or Mac?

1. Download and install ABBYY FineReader PDF on your computer.
2. Launch the program, go to Scan > Microsoft Excel.
3. Import business card images into the program from your device, or the scanner that connected to your device.
4. Choose keep formatted text or plain text, select an OCR language, and adjust other settings.
5. Once finished, click Convert to Excel to start the process.

 

Free Apps to Scan Business Cards to Excel

We’ve studied on dozens of apps designed to scan business cards, it is pitiful that most of them allow exporting as CSV only and require a payment. If you are still looking for free business card scanners to Excel, we have 3 options, but both of them require extra steps to save your business cards in Excel.

#1 OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is a note taking app for free, working on Android, iOS, Windows and macOS devices. Its built-in OneNote OCR feature allows scanning files, copying texts from images. It doesn’t support exporting recognized files as Excel, but you can copy and paste the business card information to an Excel spreadsheet.

Disadvantages:

• Cannot batch scan and convert.
• Cannot export business cards as Excel directly.

Scan Business Cards to Excel Free with OneNote

1. Download and install Microsoft OneNote onto your desktop or mobile device, the steps will be similar for different versions.
2. Open a recent note or create a new note.
3. Go to Insert > Pictures, you can import a business card from the file, camera or online.
4. Once the business card is imported, right click on the image and choose “Copy Text from Picture”.
5. Then open an Excel document, paste the business card data into it.

#2 Evernote

Evernote is another note-taking app with OCR feature. Although it can’t export business card as Excel, its mobile version has offered a special feature to scan your cards accurately and import them to your contacts with fields correctly filled. The name, email address, telephone number will be in right position.

Disadvantages:

• The feature is available on iOS and Android.
• 5 business card scans are supported for free.
• Cannot batch scan and export.
• Cannot export business card as Excel format directly.

Scan Business Cards to Excel Free with Evernote

1. Download and install Evernote on your device.
2. Tap on the Scan icon to take a photo of the business card, or upload a photo from your phone.
3. Expand the Photo menu and select Business Card type.
4. Go ahead with Continue scanning.
5. The details including name, title, company, email, phone and address will be recognized correctly, save them.

#3 (a9t9) Free OCR Software

(a9t9) Free OCR Software is an open source application for Windows Store. It is completely free and simple to use without any limits. This software includes support for reading and recognizing images and PDF documents in 19 languages. You can save the OCRed result as Text or Word format, then copy and paste the business card information to an Excel spreadsheet.

Disadvantages:

• The software is only available on Windows.
• You need to copy the result from Text/Word format to Excel.

Few Steps to Use this Free Business Card Scanner to Excel

1. Download this app from Windows Microsoft Store.
2. Run the program, it has an intuitive user interface.
3. Click Open... to import your business card photos, and choose an OCR language.
4. If you have uploaded multiple files, tick Process All Documents and go ahead with Start Ocr.
5. The recognized result on the right can not be selected and copied, so save it as Text or Word.

 

Free Business Card Scanners to Excel Online

Still, we can scan business cards to excel without installing any app, just by using an online free OCR tool.

#1 Google Drive

Google Drive is a free platform to store and manage files online, it offers a set of tools to process files online, Google Docs is one of the tools. Google Docs is OCR featured, allowing users to export scanned PDF or image as editable formats. Though not supporting export business card scans directly as Excel, you can copy and paste the text to an Excel file.

Disadvantages:

• It takes lots of time to import the data into Excel.
• The formatting may be disordered.
• You can only open one image/scanned file at once.

How to Scan Business Cards to Excel Online Free?

1. Go to Google Drive and sign in with a Google account.
2. Click + New > File upload to import your business card images.
3. Right click on a business card image and open it with Google Docs.
4. Copy the information you need from Google work interface and paste it to an Excel spreadsheet.
5. (Optional) You can also export this business card scan to other editable formats, go to File > Download and select a favored file format.

#2 OnlineOCR

It is an online free OCR converter to export scanned PDF and images in PNG, JPG, BMP, TIFF, GIF as Text, Word or Excel format. It doesn’t support batch scan and convert. But you can preview the OCR result before downloading the output file.

Disadvantages:

• Max file size you can import is 15mb.
• You can only scan business card to excel one by one.

How to Scan Business Cards to Excel Online Free?

1. Go to onlineocr.net.
2. Click SELECT FILE... to import a business card image.
3. Choose the file language.
4. Choose the output format as Microsoft Excel.
5. Click CONVERT to scan business card to Excel.
6. Download the output file or directly copy the text below.

#3 NewOCR

NewOCR is a dedicated OCR tool that can make images and scanned documents into editable text. It supports importing scanned business cards in JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF and GIF, and exporting them as text, Word and PDF. Its OCR functionality can recognize text in a wide range of languages, totally 100+. Better still, this online service has no limits on the number of files you can upload. You can scan your business cards for free all the time.

Disadvantages:

• It can only recognize one business card image at a time.
• You have to scan a business card to Excel by copy & paste.
• Some annoying ads are on the site page.

How to use this free business card scanner to Excel online?

1. Search NewOCR online tool in a web browser.
2. Click Choose File to upload your business card photo, then press Preview button.
3. Choose a recognition language or multiple languages, and set other settings if you need.
4. Hit the OCR button, then the recognized result will be displayed at the bottom of the page.

 

Compare 8 Business Card Scanners to Excel

 

Conclusion

To scan business cards to Excel, we recommend using a desktop app on Mac or Windows, large screens will be more convenient to manipulate the data in an Excel file. Also, we should take notice that there is few mobile app designed to scan our business cards to Excel, so check carefully before paying for an app to do this job.