Help Desire HD backup contacts to iMac, for a dummy

[Dougie Nucleus]

Good Day.

After an unresponsive touchscreen episode yesterday, a few functions don't work and HTC help say I can expect degradation of the phone after 2 years. This one's 4 years old. A factory reset is suggested, since :-

(a) I can't get into Google Play (it presents a screen I've never seen before, with my email address at the top in a purple and turquoise field, with four options below - Redeem, Settings, Help & Feedback and About Google. When I select Settings, and change something, the next screen is always "Check your connection and try again. Retry").

(b) the time/date won't auto-update,

(c) the time/weather widget is gone etc.

(although I can get onto the internet, and the touchscreen is ok again).

I understand its supposed to synch with google automatically when I connect it to the iMac, but I don't think it is, since recent new phone numbers have not appeared in the Gmail contacts list.

So I seek a sympathetic talk through of how to back up phone contacts to the iMac, possibly through some App other than HTC. No need to backup photos, documents etc., just phone numbers, before I take the drastic step of factory reset.

HTC suggested I download "HTC Furniture" from the website, but I can't even find it, and HTC Synch which I have downloaded, is trying to copy the contents of iPhoto TO the phone.

Many thanks - Doug

 

[EarlyMon]

Your Desire HD ought to be syncing with Google directly without connection to your Mac. That's controlled by your sync settings under main settings, Accounts & Sync.

As you say, it's behaving badly and in need of a factory data reset.

Go to People, then upper left, choose sources. Select *all* that show a non-zero number of contacts that you want to backup.

If you have contacts in "Phone" or "Sim" those are locally stored and don't sync with Google.

After that, still in People, Menu, Manage contacts, import/export, export to sd card.

Plug in to your Mac.

You're going to get the vCard (.vcf) file over by drag and drop with your Finder. Not sync or anything else.

If you want those contacts sync'd with Google, open your Gmail account on the web.

Go to Contacts.

Look probably along the top for more options, leading to a drop down with import contacts - choose that, surf over to the vCard file you saved on the Mac and upload/import.

Same drop down menu - remove duplicates.

Hope this helps.

PS - you can import that vCard file directly into your Mac Address Book but as I recall, you'll have to sort out duplicates yourself.

 

[Hadron]

Never heard of HTC Furniture - you sure they didn't mean HTC Sync Manager? But I don't know whether that would work with an older phone.

The simplest way to be certain you have a contacts backup is to go into the contacts app and from there select Import/Export from the app's settings and export them all (every category if you have a mix of phone and Google contacts). This will write them to a .vcf file on your sdcard, which you can copy to the Mac for extra safety (even import into the Mac app if you want).

When you say not all of your contacts appear in your Gmail I suspect some may be stored as phone only (even as SIM contacts maybe).

 

[Dougie Nucleus]

Thanks both for your comprehensive advice. I hadn't heard of "HTC Furniture" either. I clearly mis-heard the HTC phone help operative, whose first language may or not have been English!

The phone has progressively returned to almost full serviceability, the weather/time widget has returned, although the time isn't auto-updating even though I have it set to do so.

The contacts back-up methods are gratefully appreciated.

Many Thanks.