newBBie.com

Well I’m glad I found this blog! I also just got the 8130 and need to enter my contacts. The guy at the store said that since I am not using an outlook link, I would have to enter them manually. He offered to pull them from my old phone but I can’t find my data cable and the phone is so old there is no way they have one.

I started entering my measly 75 contacts and said to myself, I better see if there is another way. I googled “pearl 8130 entering contacts” (w/o the quotes) and your blog was first on the list. Funny too since it looks like you just wrote this today.

Thank you so much. It worked great.

p.s. I’m on Sprint and would you believe I can’t do picturemail(mms, texts with pictures) on this thing. I can get picture texts, albeit I have to open the image in the browser, but I can’t send them.

Bill,
You made my day! I was so pumped at finding the Excel solution, and wanted to share my discovery with others who might be in the same predicament. When I got into the post, I couldn’t believe how much time I was spending on it (I’m a little compulsive about detail and error-checking sometime). If nobody ever read it, used it, and commented on it, I would have been very disappointed. So, I’m glad you found it useful.

Please check back often or subscribe via RSS. I plan on working hard to post interesting things as I find them.
Kelly

@Bill
I’m sorry you have the unfortunate experience to be with Sprint. I’m with VZW (work for ‘em too), and I can do anything with mine. I wonder why they put that limitation on yours?

Thanks for this! A few months ago I created a CSV file for precisely this purpose, since I’m very suspicious of ’synchronising’ things and the uncertainty re conflicts, but couldn’t remember how to back it up.

Excellent post, much appreciated!

Adam

Very good read. I am moving away from the BES and M.S. exchange to implement a linux solution. I had to find a way to use the webmail client and still have a way to populate the address book. Needless to say this was very helpfull.

Thanks!

Find the Truth!
http://www.huttoparke.com

Thank you very much for this awesome article. I have been looking for an easy way to modify my address book on my desktop without using Outlook. The work you put into this article is very much appreciated.

this was extrememly helpful!! thanks for your time and effort in posting it!!!

Worked flawlessly! Thanks for all your info , sure saved me a lot of keystrokes.

Thanks! So much help…

Um, new to the BB experience, but does the Backup Assistant with Verizon not take care of this? All i have to do is update my old phone, turn it off, turn my new phone on, download the program with the same number and update on the new phone and it pulls all the names and phone numbers from the Verizon website where i backed it up…?

@Dntbstpd1,
Your method works for what you wanted to do–transfer contacts from one phone to another (except that in my case the first/last names got mixed up in the transfer), but for some other cases it doesn’t help. For example, if I want to hand enter a large number of contacts into my phone, data entry in Excel on a real computer is far superior to using a phone keypad. Or if I have a file on my computer with lots of contacts in it, it’s far easier to make an Excel file (e.g., CSV) out of it and use my method to get that into your BlackBerry. In summary, the Excel method is super when you have lots of data entry to do, or you have data already entered but you just need to get it into a format your phone will accept. Thanks for your question.
Kelly

Kelly,

I was very pleased to find your blog. The Blackberry Pearl 8130 is my first smartphone; just bought it last week. I didn’t want to spend the money for an iPhone which would have been my first choice. So far I am very happy with my VZW phone and this particular post was a great help. I use Thunderbird as an email client so I exported my address book as a .csv and edited the file (using Openoffice.org Calc) adding in the 60+ contacts from my old phone. I synced the file to my Blackberry using the method you described and it worked flawlessly. Thanks for the help. I’ll be watching your RSS with interest!

Thanks very much for this, worked like a charm, and very helpful for those moving to BB for the first time.

Cheers!

Very good plan. Do you have any idea how to sync Windows Calendar, using Vista?

I was able to sync Windows Mail by selecting Outlook Express in the list, but the only options I get for my calendar are ASCII Importer/Exporter and Yahoo.

I am new to Blackberry and have been struggling to get this part going.

Thank you.

@Cheryl,
I’m sure it’s possible to sync with Vista/Windows Calendar, and I tried something that got close, but not good enough. Windows Calendar exports its calendar to an iCalendar (.ics) file format. The ASCII Importer/Exporter option requires (as best I understand) a Comma-Separated-Value (.csv) format. I found a trial program at http://www.processtext.com/abcicalendar.html that was able to convert the Windows Calendar .ics file to a .csv file. And I was able to import it using the same (lengthy) basic method I describe on this page for Contacts/Excel. But the calendar events all imported as “All Day” events. After some experimentation, I realized that the BlackBerry Calendar and Windows Calendar use different names/labels for their calendar data. That’s probably why BlackBerry doesn’t understand how to import the calendar info correctly. You could edit the .csv file by hand in Excel, but that’s way too much work for something you want to sync frequently.

If you have the guts to try this, here’s what I think has a chance of working, but it requires you have Outlook: (1) Export your Windows Calendar (to a .ics file), (2) Try importing that .ics file into Outlook, and (3) Use the sync-from-Outlook method you already mentioned. Since you mentioned trying Outlook Express, I’m guessing you don’t have Outlook.

Many of my co-workers are trying to convince me to use Google calendar (since they do), and I probably will. If so, there appears to be a new Google app that allows syncing of Google Calendar with BlackBerry: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-calendar-sync-for-blackberry.html.

Please stay in touch with me on this, as we might have some common interest here.
Kelly

Kelly,

Thanks for the ideas. I don’t want to use google as I am not convinced they are secure. But, I have more than one machine. I may see if I can use the BB software on both. Now, the trick there will be, using Vista machine for syncing email, and the XP machine for syncing calendar. That would mean exporting my Vista calendar to a file, saving that to a jump drive, going to the XP machine, converting it to the .csv, then synching the calendar on that one, saving it back to the jump drive and converting again back to .ics.

Seems like it may work. It sounds inconvenient, especially for travel since my XP is a pc and my Vista is a laptop. But, I may try that at least until I can take the time to find a Windows Calendar sync method.

If it works, it may at least be faster than changing the all day appts and moving everything into an excel sheet, making some changes, etc.

It’s not that I CAN’T use Outlook with Vista. At least, I think. It’s just the principle of it at this point. As I understand it, MS at one point finally agreed to cooperate with BB, then immediately changed their settings.

One other thing I may try is using Windows Mail and Outlook calendar on the Vista machine.

I will keep you posted.
Cheryl

Kelly,
Thanks for the great info. I just purchased the 8130 last week, and so far it’s been great, except that I can’t sync with Outlook. The desktop manager won’t bring it up as an option. I’m running XP & Outlook XP (2002). Any ideas?

Also to Bill from above…
I also couldn’t send mms messages. Turns out all I had to do was a hard reboot (pull the battery out and put it back in…works fine now!) Hopefully that helps!
Casey

Casey,
Glad to have you in the 8130 “club.” Are you saying that when you use the Desktop Manager and try to do the “Configure synch…” step that Outlook does not show up as an option to sync to/from? If so, what DOES show up as an option(s)?

I found something on a BlackBerry web page ( http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/desktop/req_4dot3.jsp ) that was puzzling. It listed Outlook XP as compatible but seems to be qualifying that as Outlook XP “Corporate or Workgroup Installation” versus plain vanilla Outlook XP. I’m not sure what that’s about, but I suspect that it’s worded that way for an important reason. If you continue to have problems, is there a chance you could get upgraded to Outlook 2003 or 2007?

Thanks for trying to help Bill (comment #1).

Keep coming back. When I can steal the time, I have a long list of new posts that I want to make on some interesting 8130 topics. I’ve developed an addiction to this blogging even more than to my BlackBerry itself.
Kelly

Hi Kelly,
Thanks for the fast response! Yes, when I try to configure sync, there are only 2 options, Yahoo and ASCII importer/exporter. I was confused, too! I actually got my copy of Outlook (and the rest of the office suite) from my university back in 2002 right when it came out. It was free to me as a student, so that was a big plus. It is listed as Office XP Pro, version 2002. When I got myself a new computer a year and a half ago, it came with a 60 day trial of Office 2003, but I never upgraded because I already had this version, which worked (and continues to work) just fine…until now! It’s possible that I may have to update…I will have to do a little digging on Microsoft’s website to see what comes up for that version. It’s just weird that Outlook doesn’t even come up on the list!
Thanks again,
Casey

Just an update..
I was able to update my office xp software to service pack 3, and that seemed to fix my problem. I’m now in perfect synching harmony!
Thanks again for your help!
Casey

OMG!!! Thank you!

I tried for a few days to get the Blackberry/MS Outlook to work so I could edit my cell but I couldn’t.

I read your website and within 10 minutes I had it working and I was able to edit all 357 of my phone book entries.

If you ever need a kidney let me know!

Randy Powers
Tampa, FL

Randy,
Now that’s a generous offer–body parts! That’s hilarious. I doubt anyone will ever top that one. Well, it’s rewarding enough just to know how grateful you are. And that the info in the post really works–for yet another person.
Kelly

Hi,

I followed your very detailed instructions (thanks!) to populate my new Pearl 8130 with the contacts from my old VX8300. Everything seems to be in order, the import file is saved as a CSV and matches with the few contacts I already put into the Pearl. But, when I import the file to the Pearl nothing new shows up in the Address Book. I don’t get any errors at all. I also ensured there are no special characters (@, &, #, etc.) anywhere in my import file. Any ideas on why this isn’t working for me when it seems to work for everyone else?

Thanks again for this excellent post!

Tim

Thanks,
My boss has been asking about exporting his contacts for a while now. You really saved me a great deal of time.

Kelly,

I finally got my contacts to import into my Pearl. What I had to do was to import a bogus file in order to wipe out the existing data (8 contacts manually entered). This bogus file was incorrectly configured, thus unacceptable to the Pearl and I also had the box checked to replace all data on the Pearl. Once I validated that the address book was empty I then retried the import and it worked just fine. I’m not sure why I had this issue and nobody else did (or isn’t saying).

Regardless, I’m very thankful for your instructions as I was not looking forward to manually entering all my contacts using SureType! (UGH!!!!).

Tim

Tim,
I thought I had left a reply to your comment #23. Anyhow, I’m glad your problem cleared up, and thanks for returning to leave an update. It might help someone in the future.
Take care,
Kelly

Kelly,

Thank you so much for posting this how-to. It was the first thing I found when I hit up google for a way to synch my contacts up. Like most people I’d already had an Excel sheet set up with all my contacts. It took all of 15 minutes to copy over all 108 contacts into the new spreadsheet and upload it to my Pearl. What a breeze! I’d been pulling my hair out over this for the past three days and really did NOT want to have to enter everything by hand. You saved me hours of pointless work as well as some really sore thumbs!
Thanks man.

Jonathan

Jonathan,
You can see from my photo that I’ve lost a lot of hair, too, over the years dealing with the frustrations of computing. Glad I saved you a few follicles.
Kelly

Thanks Kelly for this posting. I am new to BB - just got my Pearl over the weekend. This definitely helped me transfer the 100+ contacts and to update additonal information for each one that I couldn’t in my previous phone. This site is amazing! Appreciate all the time and effort you put into this blog.

Steve

I love you man!!!!! About to trade my pearl back in. You saved the day with the excel trick. Hope I can find something as simple as this for my calendar. Thank you.

Fred,
I love you, too, man. But we gotta stop meeting this way. People will talk.
Kelly

My last phone was a Palm OS Samsung i500 from Sprint. Now I’m on a Pearl 8130.
I still have my palm desktop and the i500 but can’t get the BB deksptop mgr to transfer the contacts. It seems to want a Treo device.
Has anyone had this problem as well?

Thanks,
FonJu

Excellent instructions. Saved me several minutes if not hours.

Thanks!!!

Here is an Excel command string I used to construct e-mail addresses from a list of first and last names that I had from a company phone list. I had the first and last names, but no e-mail addresses:

A B C
First Name Middle Name Last Name
Joseph Blow
Jane Doe
etc…

The e-mail column was column “O” in the spreadsheet. Here’s the formula I had in cell O2:

LOWER(CONCATENATE(MID(A2,1,1),C2,”@company.com”))

Result:

jblow@company.com

Once you’ve copied the formula in as many rows as you need, you’ll have to select all of the newly created addresses, copy them and then select “paste special” “values” to convert them from formula back to pure text string. It sure saved a lot of typing for me.

Cheers

Dave,
I almost guarantee that I and some other readers will need to use your Excel trick at some time in the future. So, thanks for sharing it. I’ve always joked that if I were stranded on a desert island with only one application program, it would be Excel. You can do almost anything with it.
Kelly

Fantastic time saver. I knew there had to be a way, and your article saved me a ton of time and work. Thanks for puting it together and making is such a clearly written article. I have used the Excel sync several times and will continue to add to my contact list using this method. THANKS!!!

Best regards,

Andy

Andy,
I know–I’m glad I discovered how to do it. Excel is so cool for doing tasks like this one. Glad it helped you.
Kelly

Hi Kelly,

It is really great to have a blog like this. I know you put considerable time in this. I am more thankful for this. It makes me love my Pearl more and more!

I have a quick question. I am not sure if anybody has figured this out. I don’t want to buy data plan and i use data in as-you-go mode. As you might guess, it is extremely expensive to do that.

I was wondering if somebody has figured out how to sync pearl with outlook without subscribing to any of the data plans? I can sync my address book and calendar with outlook (which in turn syncs with gmail and google calendar), but I can’t figure out how to sync outlook.

ultimately, what i want to do is bring all my mails to outlook and sync that with pearl.

Oh, as I write, google announced ‘easier’ way to sync your calendar with outlook (and in turn your Pearl!!). Just to let all the guys know..

thanks,

I used your instruction set on my Vista machine with my new BB Curve. The file was created no problem and i added some contacts to it. I am stuck trying to get it to go back to my Curve. I change the setting to Import vs Export and it looks like it syncs, but nothing comes up on the phone. Any suggestions? I seem to be missing your screenshot that allows me to reverse the data flow. Any suggestions? Thanks

Jorge,
It may be that my instructions left out something, but I don’t see where. Numerous readers have followed the instructions with success, so if I left out something, it must be something minor. Would you mind going back through the instructions carefully and try again to get to the screen that “reverses the data flow.” It MUST be there, but maybe I forgot to tell readers to click a particular button to get there. Maybe they figured it out on their own but didn’t tell me I left out a step.

If you discover where I might have left out an instruction, please return to tell me so I can revise the article.
Thanks,
Kelly

@Chaman,
I don’t do syncing with Outlook (yet) so I can’t speak with authority. But I don’t know why you WOULD need to have a data plan to sync with Outlook. It should be achievable purely between your phone and your computer–no Internet required.

Where exactly can we learn about the new Google sync method?
Kelly

@Kelly,

Google calendar page has a link to outlook sync thing that I talked about (in their usual, new section).

I too can’t understand why would I need internet to sync my phone to my comp. However, while all the other buttons in sync window are active, the message button is not. I would really like to carry offline version of my mails wherever I go, but can’t seem to find it.

Anyways, thanks for your time.

Kelly,
Thanks for all your great work and keen insights on the 8130. I’m a new user and have gotten acclimated pretty quickly. I have one question regarding this Address Book transfer issue. I used Blackberry Desktop and synched with Outlook upon getting my new phone and there’s one problem. I didn’t know how to exclude people I didn’t want in my phone. I had over 1600 entries/contacts and they are now ALL in my phone!!! (no comments please about stupidity). I know I can wipe all that out and put them in groups, etc. But, is there a way for me to just go through and get rid of the ones I don’t want one by one or should I just start all over using your EXCEL plan. Thanks for your help.

Brian

Brian,
I have not (yet) experimented with Outlook syncing, so I can’t speak with authority. (I need to, as I’m getting a ton of questions!)

I don’t know of a quick-and-easy way to solve your problem. But I would DEFINITELY consider doing ALL my editing work in Excel. Not a chance of doing this on the BlackBerry. Fortunately, now that you have all your contacts in one place, you can export them from your phone to a CSV file, back that up, then start editing.
Kelly

P.S.–No stupidity at all. You were gutsy to give it a try.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE YOU!!! Thank you so much for posting this as I also moved from a Verizon Wireless phone to a blackberry and was quite frustrated with it. You saved me hours and hours. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

Sam,
Please tell me you’re a supermodel with a boy’s name.

I’m glad it saved you some time.
Kelly

lol@Kelly about reply to Sam

Kelly,

I deleted about 800 contact files using your excel idea. Now I have another question. How come when I go into Synch setup for ASCII it does not allow me to do a two way synch between the Excel file and the phone? Is that something I want to avoid anyway? Or am I just stuck now always doing a one way synch?

Brian

Brian,
I researched and cannot find any explanation for why two-way sync is disallowed for ASCII (plain text). Seems like that could be made to work. For my purposes, only one-way sync is what I want because I’m not doing “synchronization” so much as import/export for manual contact maintenance. Possibly that’s why they named it ASCII “Importer/Exporter” to reflect that subtle difference.

I’m glad I don’t have to talk to as many contacts as you do. At least now you have 800 less?
Kelly

Hey Kelly,

I tried again and i can only create the files and import once. I picked export from file to phone, and it seems to go through the process but addresses do not appear. So i added an address on the BB and now when i try to sync or import, the program fails on DM shuts down.

I am doing this with a BB Curve, so maybe the software is different. I may need to try another route. I am trying to avoid outlook as i don’t use it to check my e-mails.

Kelly,

Thank you for this posting, I just upgraded my phone, and I wanted augment my exisitng contact info with email addresses, but did not know of an easy way to do it. I am going to try this process, and look forward to a successful synch.

One additional question, do you know if there is a way to synch my bb pearl 8130 with my outlook calendar (so I can maintain a single work/personal calendar) without also synching other outlook info (like contacts and my work email)

It seems like it should be possible, but I have been leary of trying b/c I want to keep my work and personal information seperate.

- Dave

Dave,
I get lots of questions like yours about syncing to Outlook. I just haven’t tried that yet for a number of reasons I won’t take time to explain. I hope to experiment with that in the future. For now, I’d refer you to http://www.BlackBerryForums.com where pretty much everything under the sun about BlackBerries is covered. It’s just such a huge site it’s often hard to find an answer. But I’ll bet you CAN find an answer there. Let me know how it works out.
Kelly

I’m so glad I found this. I have several address books to copy over to my 8830 so started with the smallest…and I ran into a bit of a glitch.

I use Star Office and saved it as a MS Excel CSV file without a problem and followed your instructions. When I tried synching, I got a message saying that there was a total of 24 records skipped during the synchronization as summarized below:

Address book: Device - 0, Ascii importer/exporter - 24

Please check the synchronization log for more details.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Richard,
You were wise to start with something small–you should stick with that plan till you figure out what’s wrong. If you can find the synchronization log, that might provide a clue as to why records were skipped. Do you think the field names matched up? If the original address book did not come from a BlackBerry, the odds are high that the fields don’t match. The Desktop Manager sync tool does have a field mapper but I haven’t tried it (yet).
Kelly

worked like charm!

Perfect, saved many hours! Thanks.

I just wanted to say thank you for this work, I just bought the phone, and I was having a hard time with my contacts./

I can not tell you how much I thank you.

John Soto.

Success at last! This time it worked, but I have NO idea what the difference was.

Now if there was just a clean way to sync the Thunderbird lightning calendar…

@John,
You’re welcome. Glad it helped.
Kelly

@Richard,
Glad you returned to declare your victory. Wish we knew what made it work, too. Sometimes I guess it’s just persistence.

Can you get Thunderbird calendar synced to Google Calendar? If so, then you could sync from Google to BlackBerry. But that’s a roundabout means of doing it!
Kelly

You are the best. This is exactly what I needed. Thank you thank you thank you. Great work!

Garrett,
You’re welcome, welcome, welcome.
Kelly

I found an article, “One sync to rule them all” but the jury still seems to be out about it.

As a test, I followed your lead and exported the calendar to a csv file (transferring 5 entries without a problem), edited it, and imported it back into the blackberry. It works! Just have to watch the ending times and syntax a bit.

Thunderbird calendar has an import function but no export function, and I’ve not tested importing my csv calendar into Thunderbird yet.

I’m just wondering what other types of database information I can do the same with, perhaps by creating the original document in memo pad. If there is a way to create forms on the blackberry, it ought to work.

Richard,
Great job with the calendar/CSV trick. You can do the same thing with memos (export/edit in Excel/import) but I haven’t yet come up with a good reason to. Maybe one day.
Kelly

Thanks for this information. Very helpful. However, I do have a question. I am trying to get the birthdays and anniversaries to load onto the phone correctly. Do you know what format the cell must be to do this? Do you know of an easier way? Thanks for your help.

Heather

Heather,
I wouldn’t know without experimenting, but you can easily do this: Go into your phone and add birthday and anniversary dates (need not be accurate–it’s just for a test) for one contact. Export that to an Excel CSV file. Open the file in Excel and examine the format of the dates for that test contact person. There’s your answer. Please report back so others can know the answer, or if that doesn’t work for you.
Kelly

Try loading a few test activities, appointments, or events into the blackberry calendar. That way when you export it to a .csv file, you will be able to see the date and time syntax.

Thank you so much!!! I only wish I had found this blog sooner. It would have saved me a TON of time. I really, REALLY appreciate that you took the time to put this up on the web.

Best,

David

David,
Glad it helped.
Kelly

Kelly,

Thank you for taking the time to put this together! Very easy to follow and worked like a charm.

Rick

Rick,
Appreciate your feedback.

I might want to corresond with you about Distance Learning. Need to look over your site first.
Kelly

Any way to have the time automatically stay current when traveling into another time zone (Say from east coast to west coast) without going in each time and manually setitng the time. Seems most phones do this, but not the 8130.

D,
Do Options > Date/Time, and set Date/Time Source to Network (instead of BlackBerry). That way, the wireless cells you travel through will provide the time to your phone.
Kelly

Kelly,

I tried that and even called VZW and they had no help for me. The had me do a soft reset with battery removal and even *228, but nothing worked. If you come across other questions/answers, please post. Thanks.

D,
I bought my 8130 just before I traveled from Georgia to Colorado and traversed two time zones. I thought I remembered it changing automatically, but from I’ve found on the web, I must have changed the time zone setting. So it was NOT automatic. I’m not sure which way makes more sense. I guess RIM is thinking it’s better for the owner to decide which time zone the phone is showing rather than have it switch automatically. The network can keep it accurate regardless of time zone setting, but the person has to choose which time zone they want displayed. The more I think about it, I guess that make sense.
Kelly

I was able to get it to excel and made the changes that I wanted, but when I try to get it back to the new phone… I can’t make it happen. I did everything as you said above. Anyone have any ideas?
thanks

Disappointed,
Sounds like you’ve done everything right but at the end of my article I explain how you need to reverse the direction of syncing from ASCII Importer/Exporter back to the Device. My article is cut short there, but that’s where things seem to be going wrong for you. Start at the near-end of the article and see if you can’t get that part straight. I know this procedure works because a few dozen people have followed the instructions with success (including myself). Maybe my article just gets too vague at the end. Sorry.
Kelly

so what is the procedure to get the contacts back to the phone?

Johh Soto,
I explain it at the end of the article but not fully. You reverse the direction of the sync, then repeat the process I describe for getting the contacts OUT of the phone. I didn’t repeat the whole explanation so the article wouldn’t be twice as long with the same screenshots repeated. Sorry, but try again.
Kelly

Hello,
I was ecstatic to find all the info you have blogged about the BlackBerry Pearl 8130. I just bought one a week ago and am still having the hardest time downloading my contacts using Excel.

I had a Nextel phone before, and switched from Nextel to Sprint (not sure if that has anything to do with it). The version of the BlackBerry Desktop Manager I have is 4.3. I followed your steps pretty much the way you have it outlined here, except 1 or two things are a little different on my version (i.e. “Select Desktop Application” comes before “Sync…Options). Because of my need to contact a few of my normal personal contacts I have manually added 11 out of 195 contacts. The sync the way you explain it works fine. When I try it the other way, it does not work. It begins to process and then gives me the following:

“Error encountered. Error code - 0×80040057. Check documentation.”

I really don’t want to manually enter the remaining contacts, but I know I will have to add at least 10 more of them sooner rather than later.

Do you have any suggestions of what might be happening here? Your response is greatly appreciated.

Kindest regards, from someone who apparently does not know what they are doing.

How many contact’s can the 8130 hold?

Corey,
I don’t think there is any enforced limit on the number of contacts. It’s more a matter of how much free memory you have. It’s common for me to hear of some people having a few hundred contacts.
Kelly

@Apparently Doing Something Wrong,
It may not be YOU that is wrong. You didn’t say if the error was from the Desktop Manager or Windows, of if you could determine that. When I encounter strange problems, I try “easy” things first, then work my way toward more complicated troubleshooting steps.

I would certainly make sure my phone was “on” and ok, and I’d make sure the cable to it was plugged in securely. That’s easy enough to check. And make sure no other USB things could be interfering, maybe by unplugging any other USB devices. (My first guess would be that something is going wrong in the communication over USB between your computer and your phone.)

One thing I do is, where possible, reboot my computer and try the failed process with a hopefully “clean” starting point. When that doesn’t work, if I can remove and reinstall the software I’m using, I try that (in that case, it would be the Desktop Manager).

Let me know if you make any progress using the tips above.
Kelly

P.S.–I’m also using version 4.3 (August 2007) of Desktop Manager.

Hi Kelly,
I saw your response. No, I’m not sure who is giving that error. My laptop is low on memory though, so I tried to install the BlackBerry Desktop Manager (BlackBerry Internet Service option) on my work PC this time.

The sync of the current 12 contacts from the device to ASCII Importer/Exporter works fine, but the sync from ASCII to the device results in the same error as before:

Intellisync
Error encountered. Error code - 0×80040057. Check documentation.

Your thoughts?

Apparently Doing Something Wrong,
Check that your Excel file (must be .csv format!) doesn’t have any blank records, records missing important data (first/last name, phone number OR email address), or records with bogus data (e.g. name or phone number with invalid or even unusual characters, or phone numbers too short/long). Since you are experimenting with a small number of contacts, you could save your original file, then use a test copy of it, and delete records one-at-a-time to see if one contact in particular is causing a problem.

Lastly, make sure your phone isn’t extremely low on free memory (Options > Status, read File Free).

If the above fixes the problem, please return to share with me/us.
Kelly

Thanks a lot for this great information! Worked wonderfully to perfection. Appreciate all the effort in putting together this great piece of article.

Thanks again.
Regards,
Praveen

Praveen,
I’m so happy it worked for you. You’re my first reader from Australia to leave a comment. Tell all your mates about the blog, please!
Kelly

Thank you Kelly…it was something simple that was causing the problem - the name of the one of the column headings. I will continue to log on to learn more about how to use this device.

Signed,
I finally got it right!

Thank you so much - I have been struggling with manually inputing names for my new blackberry and this worked like a charm….

Suman,
Glad it was helpful.
Kelly

@Apparently Doing Something Wrong Finally Got It Right ,
So glad you figured it out, and came back to share so others could benefit.
Kelly

thank you SOOOOOOOO much!!!!!

Hi Kelly,

I have read through these above comments and still can’t find a soloution to my pearl problem!
I am running the DM to import my outlook contacts into my pearl but it’s not working. The first error i got was “No applications configured for synchronization.” I figured this problem out and have since added outlook to the list of applications. I have run the synch 10 times and my outlook contacts are still not in my pearl. Any suggestions?

Lisa,
Syncing a Pearl to Outlook is a hugely popular thing to do, but unfortunately it’s something I haven’t done yet because I don’t keep my contacts on Outlook. I will be doing that in the near future, but not soon enough to help you. If you don’t get help from someone on this blog, I highly recommend http://www.BlackBerryForums.com and http://www.PinStack.com. Those sites are huge compared to mine, making it harder to find the right place to get help, but you’re more likely to find someone who knows the answer.
Sorry,
Kelly

I wanted to thank you so much for your blog. As with other users I am new to Blackberry and inserting 100’s of addresses manually, well let’s just say it’s a job in itself. Your method worked wonderfully . . . .

I also wanted to state to the person making the comment about the “Verizon Contact Assistant” it doesn’t work on Blackberry’s. It will not even allow you to download the program to the phone. Verizon gives you a list of phones eligible for the contact assistant.

I have been a faithful Verizon customer for over 6 years and they blocked alot of application and I dislike it but their service is outstanding! I’ve tried them all.

Thanks again!

klcolon,
Thanks for your comments.
Kelly

This was very helpful. You’re a life saver.;-)

Thank you for your help, I had been trying to figure out how to sync my outlook contacts to my pearl and from your site was able to do so. What a pain in the you know what these things are to set up if you have no idea what you are doing!

Ross,
The whole reason for the success of most blogs and forums like these is that the directions we’re given are usually not adequate. Well, also, we typically don’t read the directions we ARE given, either. But getting help from a fellow BlackBerry owner on the web–that’s a cool way to learn stuff–and beats reading a manual, right?
Kelly

Thanks for the great info - just became a BB 8130 owner and this saved me tons of data entry. I can’t wait to explore the rest of your site!

Paula,
Glad to have you as a new reader and new 8130 owner.
Kelly

Found the Blackberry Forum Paper on this. Thanks so much for the screen shots and step by step!!! Yesterday I accidentally installed a non-compatible software that forced me to have to restore the original OS. Sad times. Luckily I’m smart now and backup… well atleast now…
I’m not able to get the VZ Backup Assistant to work with my BBerry 8130 - is there a special step for this to work?

Thanks again!!

Bberry forum post: http://www.blackberry.com/btsc/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=KB11194&sliceId=SAL_Public&dialogID=127928367&stateId=0%200%2057233172

Brenda,
The 8130 is not compatible with Verizon’s Backup Assistant (see http://products.vzw.com/index.aspx?id=news_going_details&appId=4233). You’ll need to do your own backups. I export my contacts to a CSV file using Desktop Manager in addition to doing DM’s regular backup utility.
Kelly

Hi Kelly,

Definitely my plan at this point. Just need to get home to my laptop and usb cable to begin the process. For the example of the rows - Am I right to assume that they are in fact the row’s of the export or are they column headers? Figured I’d get an early start with the excel here at work and my backup assistant’s textual data from online.

Thanks!
Brenda

Brenda,
If I understand your question, when you export your contacts (Address Book) to a CSV file, then open it in Excel, the first row in the spreadsheet will be the column headers of the contacts. All subsequent rows will be contacts.

If you’re trying to restore contacts from Backup Assistant, you can export an empty Address Book to your computer to get a CSV file with headers to start loading manually with contacts. Then you can import it to your phone.
Kelly

Hi Kelly
Thank you very much, you’re the man! I spent all day unsuccesfully trying to get my contacts off my old phone, so I’m very appreciative for your way of manually getting them on my new Pearl 8130. You just saved me a lot of time.

Thanks for taking your time to do this awesome blog.
I am in love with my BlackBerry, but as in any love story, there will be something that make us cry. for me, it is that spell guesser that is trying to help me and it is going to make me crazy.

Thanks you very much.

If you ever write a column about “Marriage, women and understanding”, please let me know. That is another love story with a few crying scenes. (to say the least)

Thanks.

Hi Kelly,

great post, do you also happen to know if it is possible to add groups that I have in my BB addressbook to the CSV file?

@German Munoz,
By “spell guesser” I think you’re referring to SureType. I have several articles on the blog where I try to help with SureType. It can be very frustrating at first, but people report that when they figure it out, they LOVE it.

It’s interesting that you suggest an article about “marriage, women, and understanding.” I’m afraid anything I could write would be terribly inadequate to deal with that subject. I’d rather stick with a simple subject like the BlackBerry. Kelly

@Almar Diehl,
With the BlackBerry, there are “groups” and “categories”. Groups can be used to create an email list or message (MMS only?) list. Categories can be used to organize contacts (or tasks or memos) to narrow your searches.

You can edit Categories in the CVS file by finding the column (heading) of that same name. I can find no way to edit Groups in the CSV file, however.
Kelly

THANK YOU SO MUCH. I have been searching the web everywhere, calling my Verizon support network, … this is EXACTLY what i was looking for. Thank you thank you thank you, you have just validated my purchase of the Pearl.

Eva,
If I could just get a commission from Verizon!

Glad you found the help you needed.
Kelly

Hey Kelly, just want to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I have been online for at least 3 hours trying to find a way to get my phonebook in RAZR to my new BB Pearl… and you finally gave me the answer I needed..
Again, Thank you so much!

WAHOO!!!

Jennifer,
I’m guessing you got some contacts loaded. Kelly

wow - thank you so much! i just had to change phones because a couple of the pins where you plug the charger into were broken. of course this is also where they plug in to transfer data. since i had never performed a backup, i was facing either losing all of my contacts or spending an extensive amount of time getting them all