Contact transfer to my 8400

[MrBiggz]

Greetings!

I just got a SCP-8400, I like the phone. I had an RL-4920 which I had data cables for and got my phone book off of it. I'd like to be able to load it onto my 8400. Don't feel like adding all those numbers AGAIN!!!

I see the nice data cable is there with the 8400 but seems you have to have some microSD memory to use it. Yeah, I'm cheap .. don't feel like shelling out anymore money for the memory.

Any suggestions of .. am I just going to have to play Phonebook Joe and put all these things back in??

Thanks!

[chasewildstar]

Yes, ya gotta put in the phone book manually.

However, if you have content you want sent to it, like your own ring tones, pictures etc, may I suggest you try the old 36Upload site, which is now http://www.mixxer.com/

Its free. And since you get the first month of Internet free, you can use that site to customize your phone.

I managed to download my 8100 stuff, to my computer, then sent them to that site, then downloaded them to my 8400.

I just got a Scandisk MobileMate +SD SD card reader/writer, and the software that came with it does not allow me to send my music and other stuff back to the card, so I need to find another program that will allow me to do so.


.

[sbiz]

Yes, ya gotta put in the phone book (http:///#) manually.Bogus!

A 60MB microSD card came with the phone (#). You can pull the vcf phone book over to the microSD card using Bluetooth (#) or the USB cable (#). Just Restore the vcf phonebook as per page 147 of the manual or pdf user guide. Tools>Micro SD>Phone Book>Micro SD Files>Phone Book>[enter lock code]Options>Restore.

[chasewildstar]

Bogus!

A 60MB microSD card came with the phone (#). You can pull the vcf phone book over to the microSD card using Bluetooth (#) or the USB cable (#). Just Restore the vcf phonebook as per page 147 of the manual or pdf user guide. Tools>Micro SD>Phone Book>Micro SD Files>Phone Book>[enter lock code]Options>Restore.

Ok.. I had the 8100. HOW do I pull that phones Book, from it, to the SD card?
Just wondering since Ive already manually input all 120 phone contacts into the 8400.
And yes, then I backed it up to the SD card.

Ive been collecting all the snipets of information Ive obtained from this site, and will post a help text for newer owners later today.

LOTS of good information in these forums.

[sbiz]

1) Download a piece of software called Bitpim, www.bitpim.org (http://www.bitpim.org/), and load it onto your computer (#).
2) Connect the 8100 to the computer with a USB cable (#), and let Bitpim copy everything in the 8100 into a data file.
3) Export the the phonebook from Bitpim to a VCF file, File>Export>vcards>vcard v3 (#).0.
4) Load the vcard file onto the microSD of the 8400 by USB or Bluetooth (#).
5) Reload the VCF contacts file to the 8400 contacts menu, Tools>Micro SD>Phone Book (#)>Micro SD Files>Phone (#) Book>[enter lock code]Options>Restore.
I've been collecting all the snipets of information Ive obtained from this site, and will post a help text for newer owners later today.As with the rest of the Internet, there is a lot of rumor and bad info in SU too. Try to validate info before passing it on. Otherwise, it won't serve a constructive purpose.

[kentthorne]

why dont you just go to the store and have them do it on there cellebrights. way easier that downloading it and all that jazz.

[MrBiggz]

Thanks for all the answers! I got my contacts in .. had to do the manual thing than transfered the SD over to my wifes phone and restored it. So, it wasn't as bad as I was thinking!

The sprint store people didn't even offer to swap the contacts .. shame on them!

Again a very humble thanks!

[jokerone]

1) Download a piece of software called Bitpim, www.bitpim.org (http://www.bitpim.org/), and load it onto your computer (#).
2) Connect the 8100 to the computer with a USB cable (#), and let Bitpim copy everything in the 8100 into a data file.
3) Export the the phonebook from Bitpim to a VCF file, File>Export>vcards>vcard v3 (#).0.
4) Load the vcard file onto the microSD of the 8400 by USB or Bluetooth (#).
5) Reload the VCF contacts file to the 8400 contacts menu, Tools>Micro SD>Phone Book (#)>Micro SD Files>Phone (#) Book>[enter lock code]Options>Restore.


One thing I have to add to this:

The folder you need to place the vcf file in in the SD_PIM file. Ex: F:\SD_PIM

This folder was created by my phone when i backed up the one number I programmed by hand.


Other than that minor addition, his instructions rocked! They saved me hours of time importing my hundreds of contacts.

[Coop1979]

Can you use the USB cable that came with the 8400 with the 8100? I'm not at home or I would obviously try, but I thought I would post it here first so I don't get my hopes up.

[Brandon]

I would assume you could since the serial ports are the same.

[jokerone]

Can you use the USB cable that came with the 8400 with the 8100? I'm not at home or I would obviously try, but I thought I would post it here first so I don't get my hopes up.


i am not sure.

The data cable for the 8400 is the one that worked for the 8300 and the 5500. I think its sanyo's standard data interface. Thankfully because my chargers all have that end.

[Coop1979]

It works! I'm using BitPim right now to download all of my fiance's contacts - thanks a lot for the help!

[Coop1979]

All done!

Just one note to add to the post above - place the .vcf file in the SD_PIM folder.

[balinorgb]

1) Download a piece of software called Bitpim, www.bitpim.org (http://www.bitpim.org/), and load it onto your computer (#).
2) Connect the 8100 to the computer with a USB cable (#), and let Bitpim copy everything in the 8100 into a data file.
3) Export the the phonebook from Bitpim to a VCF file, File>Export>vcards>vcard v3 (#).0.
4) Load the vcard file onto the microSD of the 8400 by USB or Bluetooth (#).
5) Reload the VCF contacts file to the 8400 contacts menu, Tools>Micro SD>Phone Book (#)>Micro SD Files>Phone (#) Book>[enter lock code]Options>Restore.
As with the rest of the Internet, there is a lot of rumor and bad info in SU too. Try to validate info before passing it on. Otherwise, it won't serve a constructive purpose.

Worked on my wife's new phone... we were able to take her contacts which were stored in Outlook and move them to her phone... again, thanks for the input.

[skierpage]

Ive been collecting all the snippets of information Ive obtained from this site, and will post a help text for newer owners later today.
Forums suck for help text. They're good for interaction, not writing things down.

I'd rather read wiki pages like http://www.phonenews.com/phones/index.php that's regularly updated than read through long old sticky threads.

[rlowell]

Group:

I thought this phone supported OPP. I think that means it will take a single contact at a time over Bluetooth.

But there are syncing programs around like Susteen's Data Pilot and Smith Micro Systems' QuickLink Mobile Phonebook that will take your address book from the old phone book and sync it in to the new one, aren't there?

rlowell

[mm04]

This is what I receive when I try to export from BitPim

BitPim version: 0.9.10-official
An unexpected exception has occurred.
Please see the help for details on what to do.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "importexport.pyo", line 2296, in OnOk
File "vcard.pyo", line 924, in output_entry
File "vcard.pyo", line 862, in out_note
File "vcard.pyo", line 724, in out_line
File "vcard.pyo", line 671, in myqpencodestring
File "quopri.pyo", line 107, in encodestring
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2026' in position 11: ordinal not in range(128)


1. Is there another way to import my contacts from Outlook?
2. I have managed to create a folder with all of my contacts in vcard format. Any idea on how to import this folder into the 8400?

[ink718]

h0w ab0ut blueto0th? I dont kn0w much ab0ut that ph0ne, s0 if it has bluebo0th supp0rt them use the 0pti0n. My br0ther transffered his c0ntacts fr0m his Katana t0 his new PPC using the bluebo0th techn0l0gy in the b0th the ph0nes. Ab0ut 80 c0ntacts tranffered less than 40 sec0nds!

[skierpage]

This is what I receive when I try to export from BitPim
...
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2026' in position 11: ordinal not in range(128)
You can join the bitpim-user mailing list for support (please be polite, remember how much you paid the developers for it ;) ), https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitpim-user

In this case I think you have a funny character in your phone book or calendar, like an accented n-tilde or e-acute. Maybe it's Unicode u2026, the horizontal ellipsis '...' "character". Maybe it's the 11th character in an entry. If you can replace it with plain ASCII (the characters you see on your keyboard keys), you may have better luck exporting.

Good luck.

[rlowell]

ink718:

This "Bluetooth Send" operation you're talking about your brother having done is interesting. I'm not sure it will work with the 8400 when it is the receiver of the contacts. But I'm going to try. I know that my older Sprint phone (Sony Ericsson T608) could do this. From my Palm PDA, I could just do "Send Category" from the address book in the PDA and the whole thing would transfer to the phone.

Most of the phones only receive one contact at a time. And they generate errors if you try to send more than one. If anyone's been able to send a whole address book to the 8400, please share with us in this thread.

rlowell

[Sprint Know It All]

yeah u can send one contact or u can send the whole phonebook via bluetooth i have done both. My question though is, if you are going from one 8400 to another, why dont you just save all of your contacts to the memory card and put the memory card in the new 8400? You do know that you can save your phonebook to the memory card to have a backup right?

[rlowell]

If I can send the whole address book to the 8400 at once, that's great. Very few BT cell phones I've seen on Sprint can do this.

But I'm definitely not going from one 8400 to another. I will only have one.

rlowell

[sbiz]

If I can send the whole address book to the 8400 at once, that's great.Just read page 147 of the User Guide and use the Restore choice. The contacts list just needs to be in a vcf format. Your Ericsson T608 and Palm PDA probably export to that.

If you use a USB cable instead of Bluetooth, put the vcf file in the SD_PIM folder of microSD card.

[rlowell]

Group:

I activated my 8400. I paired my Tungsten E2 PDA with it.

I went into the address book of the PDA. I tapped "Send Category". All my contacts are in one address book category.

The PDA chugged along. The 8400 asked me if I accepted the transfer. I told it to accept. Then the 8400 said "reveiving contacts from <my pda BT friendly name>. It went on 60-90 seconds.

Then I got a "Contact Memory Full" message. And it only had 361 contacts.

The amount of contact names in my PDA is close to but less than 500. And I've probalby got an average of 2.5 phone numbers per contact. From the specs I read of the phone, this should not be overloading it.

Have any of you run into this "small address book" problem?

If your contacts have less than the 5-6 numbers per contact that I've read this phone can support, will it allow you to store more than 500?

Can the 8400 use the SD card memory for it address booK?

Thanks in advance, rlowell

P.S.: Being able to send a whole address book at once from a BT PDA means that OBEX on this phone is fully enabled.

[rlowell]

sbiz:

You were right. I exported a *.vcf file from the Palm Desktop on my laptop to the uSD card (in the SD_PIM folder) and imported it in the 8400.

It ran out of room with about the same number (366) of contacts imported as when I just pushed the whole address book to it from the PDA using OBEX.

It's funny. I've got a Nokia 6165i I just stopped using for this. It also is officially a 500 contact max address book. All my contacts fit in it.

The 8400 gave me EvDO. But its address book's too small. I'll probably end up with one of the RAZR family phones. They hold 1000 entries.

rlowell