transferring phonebook with help from a PDA?

[JoeBananas]

I've read in several places where people say it's possible to transfer the phone book to the Prius with the help of a PDA. Has anyone actually had success with this? I've tried with my IPAQ 5400 and I can't even get the IPAQ to pair up with the car. The IPAQ can see the car but that's as far as it goes.

Thanks in advance.

[tag]

My Garmin iQue is my PDA. It's great but no BT. :cry:

I was thinking about just picking up a cheapo phone off ebay solely for the purposes of using it to transfer the phonebook to the car. Something on the order of the Siemens S56 or Sony T68i.

What do you think?

[wesj49]

You will not be able to transfer contacts with a PDA or laptop alone. It still requires a BT phone. The Prius pairs with the phone but accepts the transfer from the PDA or laptop or computer.

[JoeBananas]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(wesj49\";p=\"67199)</div>

You will not be able to transfer contacts with a PDA or laptop alone. It still requires a BT phone. The Prius pairs with the phone but accepts the transfer from the PDA or laptop or computer.
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Thanks. I was able to get the data to transfer, albeit one entry at a time, but the numbers appear as vertical lines or blank. The names are correct though. I thought it might have been because the number was in the wrong field for the contact but I tried nearly every 'phone#' field to no avail.

Any suggestions?

[wesj49]

The numbers cannot have formatting. Make your numbers look like 18182135555. When I transfered some contacts using my ipaq 4155, I had a lot of trouble with this because the contact app has no way of turning off phone number formatting. I ended up transfering unformatted numbers from Outlook Express on my laptop to the pda. The PDA app didn't format the transfered numbers unless I edited them. I use my laptop to transfer contacts, I was using the pda for testing for another person. The pda wants to use the business card transfer profile which only transfers one contact at a time. The laptop and Outlook Express will transfer any number of selected contacts. BTW, did you transfer contacts from the pda with or without a BT phone?

[JoeBananas]

The numbers cannot have formatting. Make your numbers look like 18182135555. ...... BTW, did you transfer contacts from the pda with or without a BT phone?

That did it. Thanks for all the help. One at a time with the pda but it's all there. I did have to use my phone while using the pda to transfer the phonebook. I don't have bluetooth on my laptop just my pda. It probably took 30sec per contact but I'm all set now.

Thanks again.

[mcitron]

Could you review what you did in a step by step process. I am having a little difficulty putting all this together.

Thanks

[JoeBananas]

Could you review what you did in a step by step process. I am having a little difficulty putting all this together.

Thanks

Sure. First I had to download my phone book from the phone to the PC. There are a number of programs that do that. I then saved it out as a comma delimited file (.CSV). Next I imported it into Outlook contacts folder. When I did this, Outlook converted all my unformatted numbers to formatted number, i.e.; 8005551212 became (800) 555-1212. So I had to manually go through and edit each contact in Outlook and remove the formatting. After the editing was completed I sync the Contacts with my IPAQ. Then I went to the car. Once in the car I turned the power on and waited for the phone and car to get a successful Bluetooth connection. Now, if you haven’t done so already, from previous attempts, go to the Bluetooth manger of the PDA and try and add the car as a device. You won’t be able to connect to it but you just need it in the list of devices. Now, press the phone button on the steering wheel and press the Settings button on the NAV screen. Make sure the Contacts screen is open on the PDA and select Transfer Phone Book on the NAV screen of the car. Once you do this the, you'll see that the phone disconnects the Bluetooth connection. So on the PDA click and hold on the first Contact until the popup menu appears and select Send via Bluetooth from the menu. The PDA will show you the list of devices. Make sure the type of device is All Devices and not just Object Push. You should see the car listed. Select the car and click OK. The PDA will transfer the contact to the car and the car will return to the Settings screen. After a few seconds the phone will re-establish the Bluetooth connection to the car. Make sure you wait for this to happen before you continue and even wait a few seconds after it that. Now press Transfer Phone Book again on the NAV screen and when prompted to Overwrite or Add select Add. Next, go the second Contact in on the PDA and do the same thing all over again. Continue until all your contacts are in.

That's it. Good Luck!

[mcitron]

As soon as I open the contact screen on my PDA iPAQ 2210 or or close a contact after removing the formatting it on my desktop Outlook, it formats the numbers again with parentheses and dashes. How do you keep it from doing that? This seems to be a common property for Pocket PC PDAs. Am I missing something?

[wesj49]

As soon as I open the contact screen on my PDA iPAQ 2210 or or close a contact after removing the formatting it on my desktop Outlook, it formats the numbers again with parentheses and dashes. How do you keep it from doing that? This seems to be a common property for Pocket PC PDAs. Am I missing something?

The only way I was able to defeat this problem was to transfer unformatted Outlook Express contacts from my laptop to the pda. If you don't edit the numbers they will stay unformated. Go figure.