You came back from a wedding with nine visiting cards. You photographed all of them in the car, felt organised, and never opened those photos again. Two months later you need the caterer and you are scrolling through a gallery full of food pictures looking for a rectangle of white.
A photo of a card is not a contact. It is a promise to do the work later, and later never comes. The good news is that getting the number out of the photo takes about twenty seconds with tools already on your phone.
Google Lens, on any Android phone
- 1. Open the photo in Google Photos.
- 2. Tap the Lens icon at the bottom. On some phones it says Search inside the photo.
- 3. Tap the phone number in the picture. The whole number is picked out for you.
- 4. Choose Call, or hold the number and copy it.
- 5. Do the same for the name and the email, then paste each one into a new contact.
Lens can read a decent photo of a card in a second, including numbers printed in a fancy font. It struggles with silver or gold ink on a dark card, which is unfortunately half the visiting cards printed in India. If it misreads, retake the photo in daylight and lay the card flat.
Live Text, on an iPhone
- 1. Open the photo in the Photos app.
- 2. Tap the text icon at the bottom right of the picture. If it is not there, the photo is too blurred to read.
- 3. Press and hold on the number until it is selected.
- 4. Tap Add to Contacts, or copy it.
You can also point the Camera app at a card without taking a photo at all. The yellow frame appears around the text and you can tap the number straight from the viewfinder.
The part these tools do not do
Both of the above read text. Neither one understands a visiting card. That difference is the whole job, because you still have to decide which line is the name, which is the shop, which of the three numbers is the mobile, and which one is a landline nobody answers.
On an Indian card that is real work. A typical card has a name, a designation, a firm name, two mobile numbers, a landline, a GST number, an address in four lines and sometimes a slogan. A general reader hands you all of it as one block of text.
Check these before you save
| The mobile number | Ten digits, and it should start with 6, 7, 8 or 9. If it starts with 0 or a two digit code, that is the landline. |
|---|---|
| Extra numbers | Cards often carry two mobiles. Put both on the same contact rather than leaving one out. |
| The letters O and 0 | Any reader mixes these up. Check the number digit by digit once. |
| Name against firm | On many cards the firm name is printed larger than the person. Do not save the shop as the person. |
| The area | Take one word from the address and put it in the contact name. This is what you will search for. |
Then add one line of notes while it is fresh. Where you met, what they do, who introduced you. That line is worth more than the card ever was.
Ahoyy scans a visiting card and sorts the parts out: name, firm, mobile, landline, email, address. The reading happens on your phone, so it works with no signal, at a wedding hall or a site with no bars.
Try the visiting card scannerShop boards, hoardings and screenshots
The same trick works on anything with a number printed on it, and a lot of business in India travels this way rather than on cards.
- • A shutter or a shop board with the number painted on it.
- • A hoarding for a tempo service or a borewell driller.
- • A screenshot of a WhatsApp status where someone posted their rate list.
- • A rate card or a pamphlet dropped through your gate.
- • A wedding invitation with the caterer printed at the bottom.
Photograph it, read the number out of it, and save it properly with a name, a trade and an area. The photo can then be deleted, which is the real win. You are turning a picture you would never find again into a name you can search.
The habit that makes all of this unnecessary
When someone hands you a card, deal with it in the next two minutes rather than at the end of the week. Saved on the spot, you still remember the conversation, so the notes write themselves. Saved a week later, it is a name and a number with nothing attached, which is how a contact list fills up with people you cannot place.
If you collect a lot of cards at one event, do them in a batch that same evening rather than one by one over a month. Sit down with the pile, work through it in fifteen minutes, and write the event name into the notes of every single one. Wedding of Priya, October. Trade fair, Hall 3. That one line puts every person from that day into a group you can find later, even when the individual names have gone.
And if you are the one handing out the card, the fastest thing you can do for the other person is give them something they can save in one tap. A digital card with a Save contact button puts your name, your spelling, your firm and your number straight into their phone, with nothing typed and nothing to misread.