Cellphones and Contacts/Address Book Info

[Joe]

I am currently in the process of manually copying the information from the contacts list/address book on my cellphone into a spreadsheet on my computer. It is a slow, tedious and boring process. (I am about 75 percent done.) I am doing this because my cellphone provider told me that my contact information might--repeat MIGHT--be erased if I change the battery. Lots of people have told me that this would not happen, but I don't want to take the chance.

My battery, when new, allowed 8 hours worth of talk on a full charge. My battery now only gives me 90 minutes worth of talk when fully charged, so that's only 20 percent of what a new battery would do. It's a big pain in the @$$.

My question for the readers is: What do you do to protect the information in your cellphone contact list/address book from loss? Do you have to manually copy it? Or is there some mechanism to transfer the data electronically from your phone to a computer or other device? If the latter, please tell all about your brand and type of cellphone and how the electronic data transfer gets done.

 

[beancounter]

I do it two ways.
1. I back up my contacts to my phone's SD card
2. I use a program that automatically converts the contact data to Excel format and backs it up/sends it to email, dropbox and other Cloud storage services.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samapp.excelcontacts.excelcontactslite

 

[Amy SF]

I have a basic phone right now. I have no idea if the contacts are transferable to a smartphone, which I'm hoping to get sometime this year. So I was thinking of doing the same thing, which was to copy down all my contacts by hand somewhere so I don't lose them. I have an old fashioned address book, so I'll probably put everything there.

I am of the opinion that in this high-tech world, sometimes you just have to go low-tech if you don't want to lose important information. I also carry a date book in my purse for my appointments and important events. Even if I do get a smartphone and utilize the calendar feature on it, it's good to have a low-tech backup. (The basic phone I'm using also has a calendar feature, but the phone is so glitchy that the calendar doesn't work properly, and I gave up using it.)

 

[Joe]

I do it two ways.
1. I back up my contacts to my phone's SD card

Ah, my phone is too "dumb" to have an SD card. When I first bought it, there was some sort of wire or data cable available for the phone as an accessory, but I didn't really understand what it was for or how it worked. As time passed, that particular model phone was no longer manufactured and its accessories were no longer available.

If you don't mind my asking, what brand and model cellphone do you use? How many "contact" entries can you put in your phone? How many entries do you have in it?

I have a really cheap phone that the manufacturer says has space for 200 contract entries. I actually have about 250 in the phone. Weird, huh? Now, when I try to enter a new one, I usually get an error message saying the memory is full, delete an entry before trying to make a new one. After I finish copying all the entries, I'll go back and delete the one's I'm probably not going to use.

2. I use a program that automatically converts the contact data to Excel format and backs it up/sends it to email, dropbox and other Cloud storage services.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samapp.excelcontacts.excelcontactslite

This looks great. Is it an Android app?

 

[Joe]

I have a basic phone right now. I have no idea if the contacts are transferable to a smartphone, which I'm hoping to get sometime this year. So I was thinking of doing the same thing, which was to copy down all my contacts by hand somewhere so I don't lose them. I have an old fashioned address book, so I'll probably put everything there.

I am a slow typist, but have been typing the info into a spreadsheet. It is a very slow process, tedious and boring. I've found I can do only about ten entries a day before tearing my hair out. I started out by counting the number of entries for each letter of the alphabet, then copying the ones from the letters with the least number of entries first. I am now down to the last two letters, and have about 50 entries to copy.

I am of the opinion that in this high-tech world, sometimes you just have to go low-tech if you don't want to lose important information. I also carry a date book in my purse for my appointments and important events. Even if I do get a smartphone and utilize the calendar feature on it, it's good to have a low-tech backup. (The basic phone I'm using also has a calendar feature, but the phone is so glitchy that the calendar doesn't work properly, and I gave up using it.)

I probably should carry around an appointments calendar, but don't. What type of computer do you have and what operating system are you using? If you have a PC running Windows, I may have some free applications that I could recommend. If not, then I probably can't help.

 

[beancounter]

If you don't mind my asking, what brand and model cellphone do you use? How many "contact" entries can you put in your phone? How many entries do you have in it?

This looks great. Is it an Android app?

I have a Samsung S3 mini, which is a "low end" phone with a maximum storage of 8gigs. I only have about 60 contacts. I've never had a problem with storage, and most modern phones should be able to store thousands of contacts unless there is some software limitation getting in the way.

Yea, it's an Android app.

Also, I forgot the third backup method. Android phones are synced with Google email accounts. Every time I enter a new contact, it gets automatically added to my Google contacts, which I can access from any Internet enabled device.

 

[Clueless Git]

I have a proggie that synchs my phone date to MS Outlook, Joe.

 

[Amy SF]

I am very likely getting an iPhone. What kind of backup system for contacts would that one have?

 

[beancounter]

I am very likely getting an iPhone. What kind of backup system for contacts would that one have?

There are probably Iphone equivalent programs that allow for contact backup at the Iphone apps store.
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/apps/

OT:
IMO, save your money and get an Andoid or MS device.

 

[Amy SF]

There are probably Iphone equivalent programs that allow for contact backup at the Iphone apps store.
http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/apps/

OT:
IMO, save your money and get an Andoid or MS device.

I've done the research, and determined that the iPhone is the best fit for me. So that's what I'm getting. And besides, my mother said she'd buy it for me.

 

[beancounter]

And besides, my mother said she'd buy it for me.

That's the best reason of all!

 

[Joe]

I have a proggie that synchs my phone date to MS Outlook, Joe.

That sounds great (although I have never used MS Outlook.)

 

[Joe]

I have a Samsung S3 mini, which is a "low end" phone with a maximum storage of 8gigs. I only have about 60 contacts.

If you don't mind my asking, which phone company or provider do you use?

Also, let's say your current phone were lost or destroyed. Let's say you go to the store and buy a virtually identical Samsung S3 mini. What would you have to do to get your contacts info into the new phone? Manually enter it from your records? Or would there be some way of "restoring" the data without manually re-entering it?

 

[beancounter]

If you don't mind my asking, which phone company or provider do you use?

Also, let's say your current phone were lost or destroyed. Let's say you go to the store and buy a virtually identical Samsung S3 mini. What would you have to do to get your contacts info into the new phone? Manually enter it from your records? Or would there be some way of "restoring" the data without manually re-entering it?

My provider is Verizon Wireless.

To restore my contacts, I would either load them to the phone from the SD card or load them from Google contacts. I believe the program I mentioned has a restore feature, but I haven't looked into it yet.

 

[Second Summer]

To restore my contacts, I would either load them to the phone from the SD card or load them from Google contacts. I believe the program I mentioned has a restore feature, but I haven't looked into it yet.

I would imagine that once you have turned on your new phone and logged in to your Google account, the contacts would simply just appear in your contact list on the phone. And presumably there is also a feature that allows you to import all the Google contacts so they can additionally be stored in the SIM card or the SD card, just to be safe.

 

[beancounter]

I would imagine that once you have turned on your new phone and logged in to your Google account, the contacts would simply just appear in your contact list on the phone. And presumably there is also a feature that allows you to import all the Google contacts so they can additionally be stored in the SIM card or the SD card, just to be safe.

Yea probably, but I use a third party contact program, so I'm not 100% certain that it will load automatically from Google.

 

[yakherder]

With a droid, I use this app:
BackupContacts 2 SpreadSheet

Before I had this app, I'd just sync it with my outlook account, then use outlook to back it up to a spreadsheet readable file.