Contact Question

[spideyspence]

First off, love this forum, finally stopped lurking and joined.

Second, I have had my iPhone 3Gs for 2 months now, and am wondering how do I back up all my contacts so I do not lose their assigned pictures and ringtones if I restore the phone to new status. I want to do this as the annoying auto complete keeps coming up with email addresses that are wrong or not active anymore and I can not delete them as they are not really a contact.

Thanks a lot for the help.

Spence

 

[Alli]

When you sync your iPhone to iTunes, you are backing up your contacts. You have the option of syncing them to iTunes or Outlook on your computer. You can also sync them to Google or MobileMe (or any Exchange server of your choice) and back them up there instead.

 

[lungho]

Deleting unwanted email addresses is quite cumbersome because auto-complete pulls them from a SQL database stored on the phone.

To delete these email addresses you would have to jailbreak your phone, that's if you're not running 3.1.3. Then you'd need to SSH into the phone, open the SQL database, find the specific table in which the email addresses are stored and then manually delete them. And to open a SQL database you would need something like MySQL Lite or Microsoft SQL Express.

Like I said, it's pretty cumbersome.

As far as backing up contacts, I personally use google sync. There are other methods available that I haven't tried. Maybe somebody else will chime in about this.

EDIT: Alli beat me to the punch

 

[Jerry-O]

Not to hijack the thread but can contacts be pulled from and saved to multiple locations. I have exchange contacts and google contacts and I want to use both on my cell phone but in computer world I dont want my google contacts in my exchange address book and vice versa.

 

[Alli]

The iPhone can only do one exchange account. (There is a jailbreak app that will allow you to use 2 exchange accounts, but I've not heard great things about it.) Google uses exchange.

 

[Jerry-O]

ok... forget about google, can I have an exchange address book for work and a second address book, using any other contact program, not necessarily g-mail, for personal contacts

 

[spideyspence]

So if I sync with Google and my gmail I will not lose the assigned pictures and ringtones when I re-set my phone. I will be able to import them again to my phone once I re-start it?

Thanks, this place is fantastic.

 

[Alli]

Jerry-O, you can only have one address book. You can, however, separate your contacts into groups. But if you're using exchange, they will all show up in your exchange contacts.

spideyspence, if you sync with Google you will not lose the assigned pictures when you re-set. You will, however, probably have to re-assign custom ringtones, since those are iPhone specific. You won't even have to import them again - all you'll have to do is enter your gmail info as your exchange account and BAM! they'll all be there.

 

[spideyspence]

Tried it and all contacts were merged and up in gmail. Thanks. But the pictures did not go with them to gmail. I will keep working at it. Thanks.