h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just bought a new cell phone since the old one is so old now that it may break on me any day now - plus I wanted more music in my cell phone

The new one is not one of those posh thingies, though, but a fairly old model. All I need it for is speaking, texting and music. The calendar and the camera and a few features are of course also very nice

Now, here's the thing: I wanted to send all the contacts stored in the old phone to the new one. It should be feasible with bluetooth - but it's not

Not so far, anyway. A friend ad I managed to send all the contacts to his computer (took us hours) but from there it only sends one contact at a time to the new phone

I'm so desperate I'm actually considering reading the manual

Could you transfer all the contacts on your old phone to the sim card? Then you could put that sim in your new phone and transfer the contacts from the sim to the phone.


Geggs

Don't ask me, I am a phone- a- phobic I think!

is it a new number or your old one?

That's the usual procedure - transfer everything to the SIM card and then put the card in the new phone. If you are chaning systems, some data maynot be reliably transferred (birthdays, e-mail adresses etc)

Yes, the SIM card is your friend.

No, it isn't. The SIM card only holds 100 contacts - and I have a lot more on my phone

I would have to copy the SIM card to my new phone, erase the SIM card, copy 100 more contacts on it from the old phone, copy these to the new phone, delete - and start all over again. Several times!

This is what I wanted to avoid

My number is still the same, Lanzababy, since I am moving the SIM card from the old to the new phone (and will keep the old phone as a backup)

I will ask my it gurus at w*rk for help

The sim card is useually not much good for this; it (I think), only holds like one number per contact, so if you've lots of contacts, with multiple details (address, E-mail, home phone, office phone, landline, mobile no, address, birthday, skype etc), it won't work.....

Are the two phones the same make?

I've always found the easiest way is to bluetooth the two handsets together, then move across the data (contacts, calender etc), that way, but I think that only works if the two handsets are the same make... and its still a faff, depending on how uptodate the oldest phone is, as often the contacts arrive as 'bisuness cards', to your TXT inbox, and you then have to open each and 'save as contact' or some such

I think the last time I had to do this, in the end, I did a sync from the old phone to the PC, which created a contact list on the PC from the phone, then got the new phone hooked up to the PC, and did the same, but in reverse, so it got the contact list from the PC on to the phone

I don't know. Could you synchronise with a pc then send the whole file to your new phone and put it somewhere. I got a 'pim' file on my pc with all my contacts in it.

This chap says it can't be done though:

http://www.smartphonemag.com/cms/blogs/3/tutorial_quick_transfer_of_pim_stuff_con

Can't you send a message from your old phone to all those on your contacts list asking them to reply after the date you start using your new phone. That should work to update your contacts list.

2legs: You are right about transmogryffing all the different data. I can only send one business card at a time, that would take me days

The old phone is an old Sony Ericson, the new one a brand new Nokia. Since I only have one SIM card I can't use them both at the same time - and they probably talk different languages anyway

I *think* I've managed to sync everything - including my calendar - to my Mac at w*rk - but I can't find it and send it to my new phone And my it has no idea plus he's too busy

PAL: I'll check it out

AB: I'm afraid the easiest way is to transfer a number of contacs manually every day until I'm through

By the way: Emptying my SIM card is a bad idea since the 99 contacs I have on it now are the most important and can be transferred to any other telephone if need be (for instance if the phone breaks)

You should be able still to bluetooth the two phones together, even if one doesn't have a sim card... Mine always then seem to ask me, 'do you want to use phone in offline mode', or something like that... but the bluetooth then still works

I'll give it a try

Bluetooth works with phones of different make, but if only one of them has a sim card, I have no idea what happens. Don't you have a lead to connect the new phone directly to your PC? Maybe it could work that way.

I don't have a lead yet. Thought it came with the phone, but alas

I now have about 42.000 dongles though

Only the new phone w*rks without SIM card

Which means I'll have to transfer everything contact by contact via bluetooth

So far I'm through A, B and C

Pierce when I put in my old SIM card into my new mobile phone it did not transfer any of my contacts. I am not very good at sending text messages as it takes me 15 minutes to write.

I think I once managed to do the trick using M$ Outlook Express (which I normally don't use at all, so it didn't have any data in it first). Oh, and in phone shops they also kindly offer their help for transferring the address book. If everything else fails, you may ask for help in a phone shop or something like this. Or any teenager.

Kat, some of the contacts are on the SIM card so will follow you whichever phone you use it in - but most of my contacts are in the phone, because the SIM card only holds 100

Hati, I actually went to the shop and explained my problem and the sweet young girl said "sure, I can help you" - and started to copy the SIM card...

I don't think she understood my problem the second time I tried to explain it to her either, so I didn't bother to explain it a third time

Is it possible to get bigger SIM cards? does anybody know? like 500 contacts?

I'm in the middle of the same procedure. But it was quite simple as I use my Google account as backup for calendar, contacts and such. It was basically just to turn on the phone and press synchronise...

What took some time was to move music and photos. Had to use the computer as à stop over in order to accomplish that.

transferering....