How do I back up my 'People' file to my PC?

[Pilot Pete]

Hi all

New to the forum and new to the Hero....and not really a techno genius! I have spent all day trying to sort out a problem with my new phone. It is a Hero on Orange.

The problem is I cannot download any Widgets from the Market....there is no download button when I access the individual widgets.

My research tells me this may be to do with not setting up a Google account when I first started up the phone. I have since set one up on my PC (a Dell running XP) and connected my phone USB, mounted it, but then when I try to access the google account it just keeps saying that it cannot establish a reliable connection blah, blah, blah.

Further research seems to point to me needing to restore the factory settings and trying again. This is fine, but I need to backup my 'People' file with all my phone contacts in it first. I may be wrong, but I thought this was done through HTC Sync, which after much aggro I managed to install on my PC and get to run, but it doesn't sync, it fails each time. I am not sure what is going on, but I start the sync and have tried both automatic and manual settings, trying to sync to Outlook Express, which seems to be the only option that applies to me (the other being Outlook, which I don't use).

The sync starts, but fails due to '1 general error' - 'There are no settings'.

Does this mean that it cannot find my Outlook Express Address Book on my PC, or that there aren't any on the Hero? It seems to not look at the phone contacts at all.

I am really struggling here and I do not want to have to load all my contacts from my old phone sim again as the first time round all the data was in the wrong format and it took me a couple of days to sort it all out!

I can find no other options on the phone to either copy my contacts to the SD card or to the sim card itself (I did find that I could copy individual entries to the sim, but it truncated a fair bit of some entries and couldn't do some of the long ones at all.

Anyone able to help me to get a backup of my data before I have to reset the factory settings, or know a way around the Google account problem?

Many thanks.

 

[Slug]

Before you do anything drastic, try accessing the Market from the phone (not using wi-fi) and see if you're then asked for your Google account details. Don't connect to the PC, just open Market over a 3G/GPRS connection.

 

[Pilot Pete]

Same result Slug...."Can't establish a reliable data connection to the server" message.

Any other ideas?

 

[Slug]

Any other ideas?

Optional but advised: reboot PC and Hero
Start HTCSync so that it's open on your desktop
Connect Hero to USB cable
Wait for it to be recognised by HTCSync (device name shown in HTCSync)
Click on 'Sync Manager'
Click 'Settings' and confirm your selections
Click 'OK' to exit
Click 'Synchronise Now'

Other things to check:
In 'People', are the contacts listed as 'Phone' on the rhs?
Open OE and confirm that contacts are visible there
Confirm OE settings (no experience with OE myself so may not apply?)

That's all I can think of right now, I'm afraid.

 

[cwrig]

Since android is so well integrated with Gmail and Gcalendar, when I got my phone I decided to convert to Gmail (I realize you may not want to do this). But it is ideal, because your contacts are automatically backed up and synced in Gmail.

So; I exported my contacts from Outlook to a csv file. Then in GMAIL you can import contacts from a csv file. It was pretty easy and now all my contacts are in gmail; they sync perectly with the phone and I am happy.

It took a couple weeks to get used to using gmail as opposed to a local email client like outloook, but now that I am used to it, I like it Much better. You Can downlaod gmail to outlook if you prefer the outlook interface using pop3.

 

[Pilot Pete]

Thanks again Slug

Your list is exactly what I have been doing. The problem is the synchronisation fails due to 'there are no settings' message. This is despite Outlook Express being selected manually in Settings.

Thanks to you cwrig also. I am not sure if I am expressing what I am trying to do clearly; I can't get the phone to connect through the Google Account; it just comes up with 'unable to establish a reliable connection with the server'. Thus I cannot download any Android Widgets.

To get round this problem I have read that I need to restore the factory settings on the handset and re-establish the Google Account when I start the phone up (not later on like I did when I got the phone). Before doing this I really want to backup my contacts in 'People' but can't get the Sync function to work! Arrghhh. I am so far not very impressed with this handset. I entered into a contract last week through the Carphone Warehouse.....who have been less than helpful now they have my direct debit.

So as it stands I am stuck with the option of losing all my contact details and having to type them all in again (some 148 of them), or put my old phone sim in and copy them to the phone (which I did first time round and had to then re-format each entry as much of it was in error).

I cannot believe there is no other way to get at the contacts file! If I mount the phone via the usb I can open the drive and look at several folders....but the address book contacts is not one of them!

In answer to Slug, all the contacts are on the phone memory, not the sim. I tried saving them individually as sim entries (an option I found in Edit), but it truncates much of the data due to size limitations, or refuses some that are just too long.

So, is there any other way to make a copy of the contacts, either to PC, the SD card or somewhere else, just so that I can reset my phone and get the thing to work as desired? I am losing patience after a couple of frustrating days......

 

[cwrig]

If you cant get your phone to communcate with the network or a pc there isnt much anyone can do to help you get the contacts off. Your first step in setting up the phone (I know this is hindsight) is to get it connected to the network. You dont need to download anything to do that; simply configure it correctly.

I assume tech support wants you to default the phone so you have a known starting point with them. This is logical.

If the source of your contacts was a SIM card, I assume you had contacts on another pld phone. Can you connect your old phone with the sim in it to your pc and transfer the contacts to you pc as as a backup? Once on your pc say in outlook format; its easy to import them later into GMAIL (which will sync with your phone nicely over the network)

 

[Pilot Pete]

Again thanks for help offered. I seem to have resolved the issue; it was nothing to do with the phone.....it is a problem with my installed version of Outlook (which I never use, I always use OE), which kept crashing every time I tried to start it. Didn't realise initially that the sync didn't work on my laptop because, you've guessed it - same problem with the installed Outlook!

Backup worked on my company laptop, 'People' saved, phone reset and jobs a good 'un! Hope this helps others.

PP

 

[umshamrock]

hi pilot
so how did you save your people file then?
thanks,

 

[Pilot Pete]

Backup worked on my company laptop, 'People' saved

i.e. with a different copy of Outlook.