[bigbadben10]

Hello Chaps,

For the past couple of days I have been trying to figure out how I transfer my business contacts from MS Outlook to my Playbook.

I have my 9700 bridged to my Playbook just fine so I can see all of my contact. If I lose my phone or it fails I then have no contacts on my Playbook.

I wish to have a mirror image of my phones contacts on the Playbooks contacts folder.

I called Blackberry tech support and after an hour on the phone I was told we cannot do that. This makes no sense at all to me. This is a business device, not a toy.

I have one shaw mail account that I use for all of my business e-mails.

Can somebody help me with this please.

TIA

Ben

[dennie82]

Easiest way to do this, is actually set up an email account, I set up a gmail account on my playbook and synchronized all my contacts through gmail. But always do a back up first before you proceed, just as a precaution.

[Gooseberry Falls]

I don't know if there are other ways but I use the Outlook Connector to hotmail/Live and then set up an EAS account to hotmail.

[mnhockeycoach99]

Hello Chaps,

For the past couple of days I have been trying to figure out how I transfer my business contacts from MS Outlook to my Playbook.

I have my 9700 bridged to my Playbook just fine so I can see all of my contact. If I lose my phone or it fails I then have no contacts on my Playbook.

I wish to have a mirror image of my phones contacts on the Playbooks contacts folder.

I called Blackberry tech support and after an hour on the phone I was told we cannot do that. This makes no sense at all to me. This is a business device, not a toy.

I have one shaw mail account that I use for all of my business e-mails.

Can somebody help me with this please.

TIA

Ben

I agree. I was a little shocked that I couldn't sync my contacts, calendars, etc wirelessly (I would have even been satisfied doing it through desktop manager). My hunch as this functionality will be available when BB10 drops....and others mentioned, there are workarounds (although a PITA).

Cheers...and I hope you keep your PlayBooks. I use mine constantly. I even got my wife using my old 16 GB model.

[robsteve]

I just noticed that setting up an outlook.com email on both the phone and the PlayBook will get the phone contacts into the PlayBook native contact application.

[bigbadben10]

Okay I thought for a minute I was being stupid, thank God for that. I will now try outlook.com email and see how that works out.

I must say this was not very well thought out for a business device like this. As you say hopefully BB10 will have this issue sorted properly as we want it!

Thanks guy's for helping out this newbie Playbook user

Ben

[kwm1337]

I just noticed that setting up an outlook.com email on both the phone and the PlayBook will get the phone contacts into the PlayBook native contact application.

Yep, just setup the E-Mail in the Accounts area, and make sure that E-Mail, Contacts, and Calendar are all setup to sync which they should be by default. This is the only way that I know to do it...

[bigbadben10]

Yep, just setup the E-Mail in the Accounts area, and make sure that E-Mail, Contacts, and Calendar are all setup to sync which they should be by default. This is the only way that I know to do it...

Well it seems I have too many contacts as the file is too large when I try and import the contacts file via outlook.com. What a PITA......

[ALToronto]

You shouldn't be importing, you should be syncing.

The issue of direct transfer of contacts between the handset and the PB has been raised shortly after the PB was released, and still this feature is missing. It's very frustrating, and I've had to switch to gmail just to be able to transfer my contacts to the PB. But I thought that Outlook was supported for this.

[robsteve]

Well it seems I have too many contacts as the file is too large when I try and import the contacts file via outlook.com. What a PITA......

You do not need to import them. When you setup the outlook email on the phone it will take the contacts off the phone and import them into the outlook online account. When you then setup this account on the PlayBook, the contacts will then appear on the PlayBook.

[bigbadben10]

You do not need to import them. When you setup the outlook email on the phone it will take the contacts off the phone and import them into the outlook online account. When you then setup this account on the PlayBook, the contacts will then appear on the PlayBook.

Thank you, this worked. Contacts are now on my Playbook!

Cheers,

Ben

[madman0141]

Easiest way to do this, is actually set up an email account, I set up a gmail account on my playbook and synchronized all my contacts through gmail. But always do a back up first before you proceed, just as a precaution.

Absolutely the way to go did it with the work issued 9650. This is the quickest and best way to accomplish this task.

[FF22]

I do hope that Rim comes up with a way to simplify this. Either some way of syncing/copying/whatever from the bbphone to the pb or using Desktop Manager.

I had my gmail contacts on the pb via gmail account. But I removed the gmail account when I recently went to Canada since I did not want to change to Manual sync and risk battery drain and I did not want to use Roaming data while out-of-country. Well, my contacts disappeared with the removal of the gmail email account.

[kwm1337]

I do hope that Rim comes up with a way to simplify this. Either some way of syncing/copying/whatever from the bbphone to the pb or using Desktop Manager.

^ I like this idea... I wonder if RIM could allow the bridge to sync PIM in a particular way where it is not available just when the bridge is active, but rather fully sync the information and resolve conflicts between just the two devices. We would not have to rely on our E-Mail providers to hold the information to sync back-and-forth between...

[FreeJACLive]

The Playbook is an Exchange Activesync client no differently than the iPhone or Android. You need to use an e-mail system that is compatible. They are capable of older technologies such as POP3/SMTP or IMAP, but don't blame the device if you use that old crap and it doesn't do what you want. (sync contacts)

This is the defacto standard way of doing things now and RIM doesn't need to add anything extra to support that old technology. Time to move on!

Exchange ActiveSync - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Willard814]

Hello Chaps,

For the past couple of days I have been trying to figure out how I transfer my business contacts from MS Outlook to my Playbook.

I have my 9700 bridged to my Playbook just fine so I can see all of my contact. If I lose my phone or it fails I then have no contacts on my Playbook.

I wish to have a mirror image of my phones contacts on the Playbooks contacts folder.

I called Blackberry tech support and after an hour on the phone I was told we cannot do that. This makes no sense at all to me. This is a business device, not a toy.

I have one shaw mail account that I use for all of my business e-mails.

Can somebody help me with this please.

TIA

Ben

Here is what I use to sync my calendar in Outlook: Sync with Microsoft Outlook - Google Calendar Help

[Sith_Apprentice]

Just so everyone is aware... the contacts information on your BlackBerry is a local database. Unless it is linked to an E-mail address (BES/BIS) it does not synchronize anywhere. So if you lost your device you would be SOL anyway. There are applications (like DM or Protect) that can back up these local databases, but this is not the same as synchronizing them. Bridge simply is a Bluetooth connection that allows you to VIEW and/or EDIT these local databases on your BlackBerry device. It does not import anything (other than WiFi profiles for some reason).