How to transfer address book to new iPhone 4 (which has micro-SIM)?

Question

Level 1

141 points

How to transfer address book to new iPhone 4 (which has micro-SIM)?

Since I will be unable to put the SIM card from my Blackberry Pearl 8100 into the micro-SIM slot of the iPhone 4, how can I get my contacts into the new iPhone 4? The B'berry just has accumulated contact info SIM transferred from previous Razor, not address book or calendar or anything from my iMac's now Entourage 2008 program.

My iMac's address book has 350 entries collected over the past 20 years. I sure do not want all that significant amount of old, historical info to be on my phone, so a direct sync would bring a ton of crap to the iPhone (don't want that).

Is there a way to:
1) mark some (read most) contacts NOT to transfer in a sync?
2) or any (relatively) easy way separate current 'phone related data' from the rest of the data which is more related to email and physical addresses info that I (think I) have no use for on the phone. It seems like my iPhone address book would be a confusing mess if all data from my iMac were transferred over.

Any ideas on this are appreciated.

I have been reading of the huge frustration on iPhone pre-order 'trying' today, so I have not attempted yet. I need to decide if my address book transfer would be best done at an Apple Store or if I should have it shipped to my home for me to deal with the data transfer. Hmmmn.

iMac 20" 2.16GHz, 3GB, Mac OS X (10.6.3), G3 PowerBook (10.3.9), wife iPhone 3G

Posted on Jun 15, 2010 4:08 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

DaVBMan

Level 6

9,280 points

Jun 15, 2010 4:11 PM in response to Dave Kroske

May I suggest taking the time to export out contact info to a .CSV (command delimited file) then uploading to contacts in a gMail account.

You can have iPhone sync with gMail contacts and you will find it a far better experience of having it always sync over the air to an address book you can also access from any computer in the world and edit on the computer if need be and thus have automatically on your phone with no need to sync.

Reply

Answer 2

Dave Kroske Author

Level 1

141 points

Jun 15, 2010 4:56 PM in response to DaVBMan

DaVBMan,
So I'd need set up a Google Mail account. That lets me store my address book on line with GoogleMail, right?

I am unclear on the rest your comment. Maybe commas or period(s) in the second part would be helpful. Absolutely not being a grammer freek, I just am unclear on your meaning.
I appreciate your info.

Reply

Answer 3

DaVBMan

Level 6

9,280 points

Jun 17, 2010 4:57 AM in response to Dave Kroske

Sorry about my sentence structure. If I recall right I was responding late at night.

With that said, my suggestion is to yes create an gMail account (if you don't already have one).

Find a way to export out your current contacts to a .CSV file.

Google's gMail address book has an option to Import from a .CSV file (maybe some other formats too).

Once imported, verify everything looks good and edit as needed.

When you get your iPhone there is an option to have the iPhone get and sync it's address book with Google.

Once setup, it allows you to edit contacts via a computer (browse to gMail, edit contacts) and the iPhone will automatically get the changes. Also any changes you make on the iPhone will automatically show up in Google's gMail contacts. Thus no need to ever plug phone in to sync contacts. You only need to plug in to sync music and other data.

I find this process far better than having to plug in to ensure my contacts get backed up.

You can read more about it here on Google's site:
http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/

Reply

Answer 4

Dave Kroske Author

Level 1

141 points

Jun 18, 2010 2:46 PM in response to DaVBMan

I very much appreciate the info and clarification. Next big decision is to wait for my i4 order (due 7/14 or show up at Apple Store at 4:45am to get in the 'walk-ins' line. I am leaning towards investing 4-6 hours in line on the 24th. ;o)

Reply

Answer 5

Jun 18, 2010 8:15 PM in response to Dave Kroske

I tried importing a.csv but all I can find when I search the phone is pictures.

Reply

Answer 6

Jun 19, 2010 5:15 AM in response to harleypoontang

Transferring information to iPhone from another phone or your computer
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1648

iPhone: Transferring information from your current iPhone to a new iPhone
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2109

Reply