incipient karlis: How to send a contact card with iMessage or SMS

If you need to quickly send contact information from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, it's easy to do with iMessage or even good, old-fashioned SMS. Sharing a contact via iMessage is much faster than typing it out, after all. As long as you have the information listed in your iOS Contacts app, you're always only a few taps away from sharing a vCard file (vcf) containing phone numbers, email, street addresses, and much more.

Waring: Because iMessage shares the entire vCard file, that could include more personal information that you intend. For example, sharing your own vCard could include all your Siri relationships. If there are contacts you need to share frequently, and don't want to share every bit of information about, you might want to create a duplicate, less detailed vCard to share.

How to share a contact card from your iPhone using iMessage

You can send a contact card with your iPhone through either iMessage or SMS which means the recipient can be another iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac user, or any other kind of smartphone user.

Launch the Phone app from your iPhone Home screen.
Tap on the Contacts tab.
FInd the contact you'd like to share and tap on their name.

Scroll down to the bottom of the contact and tap on the Share Contact button.

Choose the Message option.
Your iPhone will automatically insert the contact into a blank message.

Choose message option to insert contact into iMessage

Choose the recipient you'd like to send the contact to in the To field.
Tap Send and you're done!

If the bubble surrounding the contact is blue, it was sent using iMessage. If it is green, the other person does not use iMessage, or iMessage was unavailable, and it was sent using regular SMS/MMS.

How to share a contact card from your iPad or iPod touch using iMessage

The iPad and iPod touch will only be able to share a contact with another iMessage user so make sure whoever you're choosing to send a contact to is using iMessage as well.

Launch the Contacts app from your iPad or iPod touch Home screen.
FInd the contact you'd like to share and tap on their name.

Scroll down to the bottom of the contact and tap on the Share Contact button.

Choose the Message option.

Choose contact card to send in iMessage on iPad

Choose the recipient you'd like to send the contact to in the To field.
iOS will verify the recipient is using iMessage.
If they are, their name shows up blue and you can tap the Send button.

How to share a contact card from your Mac using iMessage

Launch the Contacts app on your Mac running OS X Mountain Lion.

Find the contact that you'd like to share and click on it.
In the right hand pane you'll see a share button at the bottom. Click on it.
Choose Message Card.