Scan business cards into a contact-ready PDF

Business cards are tiny documents with big retrieval value — until they're a shoebox of paper. Ten minutes with a phone turns a conference's haul into searchable, shareable PDF pages.

Single card, perfect scan

1. Dark background (cards are usually light), camera close and parallel.
2. Scan in ToPDF; the card is auto-cropped to its edges and straightened.
3. Two-sided card? Add page for the back.
4. Name with person + company: “Card-Amina-CK-Nikshan.pdf”.

A whole stack efficiently

Two workable patterns:

• Card per page (best quality): photograph each card, batch-select all — one PDF, one card per page, up to 20 per file.
• Grid sheet (fastest): lay 6–9 cards in a grid on a dark table, photograph the grid as a single page. Great as a browsable index; individual text is smaller.

From scan to contacts

The PDF is your archive; when a contact matters, type it into your phone right away while the context is fresh (“met at the expo, ask about pricing”). The scan preserves everything the card said — logos, QR codes, the works — for the day you need the details you didn't type.

Frequently asked questions

Dark cards on a dark table?

Flip the contrast rule: put dark cards on a white sheet of paper. The detector needs an edge, whichever direction the contrast goes.

Can ToPDF extract the contact automatically?

It suggests a file name from prominent text (often the person’s name), but it is not a contact manager — the PDF is a faithful image, and your contacts app is the right home for the typed entry.