OT Address Book Transfer From Blackberry to PC

[keno]

My wife would like me to copy the Address Book in Outlook Express on her Blackberry to her Gmail account on her PC running Vista Home. I am not familiar with Blackberry at all.

How is it done?

BTW, I would like to continue in her mind the idea that I am still somewhat useful. This would be of great help in this regard.

Thanks,

keno

[Kurt]

you sync - the data will come across when you set up the BB - that is the entire idea, that both outlook and the device will have the same data all the time.

[Ray]

What Kurt said, BUT....

You can easily get the Blackberry to sync with the Outlook Express address book on your PC so that when you update one and then run the sync program, they're both brought up to date. But linking the address book in the Blackberry to GMAIL running on the Blackberry is another question and is dependent on how you set up gmail.

If you setup gmail using the Blackberry's corporate email setup system, using POP3 or whatever the protocol is, I *THINK* it should work. I know it SHOULD work - I just haven't tried it to see if it will. I have two gmail accounts on my blackberry, but instead of using the built in Blackberry email sync program, I've been using Google's special app for running gmail on a blackberry. I like the interface better and its incredibly seamless. And it will include all of the same email addresses you ALREADY had in your gmail address book. BUT, if you have an email address in your Blackberry/Outlook address book, you can't just click on it and have it open a new email window to send that person an email. You actually have to manually type it into gmail the first time you want to use it. Then gmail remembers it from that point. A bit of a pain, but fortunately, once you've been using gmail for a while, pretty much all of your addresses should be in gmail's built-in address book. If she already has most of her addresses in gmail, she should be fine. If she has a bunch to transfer over, she should do it on the PC - I don't know if there's a utility for transferring all of them, but at least she could copy and paste. On the blackberry, they already have to be in the gmail application or she'll have to type them in one at a time.

Bottom line, its all very doable, but HOW it works best is dependent on how you have gmail set up on your Blackberry. Clear yet?

-Ray

[chuckaw]

Go check out blackberryforums.com or one of the countless other blackberry forums, all your info will be there.

[csm]

as a side note, the blackberry seems to be pretty durable. I dropped the damn thing into the dog's water dish last friday and by sunday night it was working again.
I guess I gotta try harder next time to get it to stop. work sent me a second one anyway as they seem to think it's only a matter of time until I succeed in killing the first one off.

[PaulE]

wants me to do something similar for her, she also has a Palm PDA. It's on my bucket list. Since I have IT help at work I was able to get my blackberry synched to my outlook. The one thing I learned in the process was the option of having a one-way synch. I only make changes in Outlook and then they go into the blackberry when I hook it up, never the other way.

[Ray]

wants me to do something similar for her, she also has a Palm PDA. It's on my bucket list. Since I have IT help at work I was able to get my blackberry synched to my outlook. The one thing I learned in the process was the option of having a one-way synch. I only make changes in Outlook and then they go into the blackberry when I hook it up, never the other way.
Kind of limits the utility of the BB when you're on the road, doesn't it? I got the BB specifically so I could get email and so I could lose my Palm Pilot. It does everything the Palm could do, but wouldn't be worth much if I couldn't arrange meetings and enter them, add contact information, amend my to do list, etc, when I was away from my PC.

-Ray

[PaulE]

Kind of limits the utility of the BB when you're on the road, doesn't it? I got the BB specifically so I could get email and so I could lose my Palm Pilot. It does everything the Palm could do, but wouldn't be worth much if I couldn't arrange meetings and enter them, add contact information, amend my to do list, etc, when I was away from my PC.

-Ray

But I'm on the road maybe 1% of my time and when I am, less than half of that is to new places. So for me it works. You can also make synching a one way street the other way too.