Newbie with issues...

My old samsung "dumb"phone went kaput the other day so the wife and I decided it was time to upgrade and see what this BB Craze is all about, so we purchased two BB Curve 8330. I am having one heck of a time getting the hang of it.
My first issue is, my old phone went into the reset loop and verizon was unable to get all my contacts. Since this has happened to me before, I had backup assitant. Well, imagine my surprise when they said it does not work to a PDA:mad:. That is 250 contacts that I really dont want to manually enter.
My second issue right now is I set up the email to my hotmail account, and I only get the email to my BB now. Some pics and files are to big to open on the BB and the email is not in my hotmail account. I am thinking of just using the BB Email, but there has to be a way to have the unread files on my hotmail account right???

I have plenty of other issues and have spent the last 3 days working on it. I really dont want to go back to a "phone" but I cant afford to spend alot of time just to learn the basics.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and I am sure I will wear out my keyboard with all the questions I have.

THanks
Jim

As far as the backup assistant, i'm not really sure what that is, I don't have Verizon... can you describe it to me?

And with the Hotmail problem. I would delete the e-mail from your device and re set it up. When I had Hotmail on my BB, I never had a problem, the messages were always in my inbox on my bb, and my hotmail inbox.

backup assistant would connect with my phone and saved all my contact info on a dedicated server. If my phone was to become lost,damaged, etc, I could recover all my contacts electronically. Verizon says that it is for phone to phone only, and since the BB is considered a PDA, it doesnt work....

I will try to remove, redo the hotmail.

Once I get these baby steps I will be posting for more help....

Thanks
Hab

Blackberrys become a lot easier to use if you just take it slow and learn your way into it, I have to say. As far as your contacts, you are probably going to have to enter them manually. No real way around it, but on the upside...you say you need to learn the phone...there isn't much of a better way than getting more acclimated to the keyboard by using it and entering contacts.

Not sure if you really USE all 250 of those contacts. I had to enter mine manually and I was able to weed a lot of numbers out that I hadn't used in a long time or just no longer wanted.

Seems ile you should be able to go to verizon. Have them find a phone with no contacts. Use your back up deal to put them on that phone. Then transfer to the blackberry.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Use the Desktop Manager "switch device" wizard. This will "sometimes" move the contacts from even a dumb phone to your BB. It worked perfectly with my wife's old dumb phone.

As far as your email issue - no, you can't sync older mail with the BIS and Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo email accounts.

I think there's an easy way to do Backup Assistant without having to manually do contacts. Can you download the file ? Or anything like that ?
I can't remember.

You could use Outlook to sync with your phone and transfer your contacts using the Desktop Manager.
If there's no way to save your files. What I'm thinking is since you have the contacts online is copy and paste the information to outlook. It still seems a bit of a hassle since you have 250 but I think it's easier than doing it manually. Although that's also good since you'll familiarize yourself with the phone.
Then once you've done all your contacts onto outlook just sync the devices using Desktop Manager.

I hope this makes sense or some what.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

I asked a friend about this and maybe this could work
I don't know. But I think it could. I'm not near a computer so I can't test it butttt from what I remember the program

First Log In @ Backup Assistant
Click the "Print" option. So you could see your info in a simpler way.
Highlight and copy the list
Open up Excel and Paste.
The data should be pasted on correctly on multiple columns.
Then File - Save As
When you get the pop up in the drop down menu select CSV extension - *.csv

Open Outlook
File - Import
Go through the wizard !

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Backup Assistant will only work on phones that are compatible with the Backup Assistant program. If you got your phone from Verizon they should be able to help you restore your contacts. You should then sync your contacts with Microsoft Outlook to make sure you always have a back up.

I will try to get the contacts into outlook in awhile. Thanks for the help. I will let you all know how it works out...

Thanks again
Hab

OK i wouldn't say i have issues more like questions... i just received a new BB pearl, my other BB was busted. my question is this, this new BB seems to have less memory than my previous Phone. There are programs in it that were not in my other phone, for example: what is blackberry MDS, my other BB didn't have that. also what is blackberry S/MIME, AND DOD root certificate?? these things were not in my other BB and i was wondering if they are needed and would it be safe to delete them?