Transfer Contacts to Nokia Lumia 800

[DinoF]

Over the weekend, my mum had some issues on her Lumia 800 whereby her Windows Marketplace app would not allow any (evn free apps) to be downloaded to her phone (some kind of mix up with Live IDs). Anyhow, the issue was resolved with a reset of her phone.

Before doing the reset, I used the Zune software to back up her photos and videos however, STUPIDLY, the Zune software does NOT offer ANY options to back up the contacts (you can ONLY back up Videos, Photos, Podcasts and Music)   This was all backed up on my dad's Windows 8 laptop (Windows 8 has to be THE most confusing and NON user friendly software I have EVER used - simply shocking)

We also managed to get a Bluetooth connection (which took forever!) to get the contacts across from the phone to the deskptop (before we did the reset of the phone) on the laptop and this file is now in the form of a .pbo file.  The problem (for whatever reason) is that we now cannot get the sync to work the other way around, to get the contacts back onto the phone. The Photos and Videos synced back up via Zune.

So - I am now at the stage where she has NO contacts on her phone, I have 1 .pbo file saved to the desktop  (which has ALL the contacts), and I cannot get the Bluetooth sync to work back to the phone  - so this now needs to be ruled out.

I have tried uploading the file to Dropbox, and then opening the same file in Dropbox on the Lumia, but it just opens up a page with the contacts and does not actually save them back to the phone.  I thought about maybe importing the file to Outlook and then trying to sync the Lumia to Outlook to get the contacts back onto the phone, but I am unsure how to do this + I think that Outlook only accepts .csv files so the .pbo file may have to be converted first?!

Its all such a mess.......

Has anyone got any advice on what to do?

[Anonymous]

Hi

How many contacts are we talking about ? Yeah I'm thinking manually inputting them.

Have you googled for this situation ?

I used gmail on my 520

[DinoF]

...I'de say she has about  30 to 40 ish contacts. She doesn't have a Google account so probably wouldn't be able to use gmail?

Haven't actually Googled this yet - thought I would post here first for advice!

[Bambino]

It's probably a tedious thing to do, but if it's that few contacts you may as well just enter them manually, then set up a Gmail account for her. Once they're backed up on Gmail you'll always know where they are, should she decide to change phones again.

[Cleoriff]

Hi @DinoF  I have just googled it...and it seems bluetooth does play a major part in the transfer of contacts?

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/support/product/lumia800/userguidance/?action=singleTopic&topi...

[Anonymous]

There is an awesome app called Copy My Data which makes copying contacts etc a piece of cake.

I know its available on Android but may be available in Windows too.....definitely worth a look.

[DinoF]

...see the weid thing was that when the phone was connected via bluetooth (and we even tried a usb data cable), the phone would NOT display in Windows Explorer (from experience, even plugging an iPhone into a laptop, always shows up in Windows Explorer, in Windows 7) so trying to drag and drop the .pbo file to the phone, was not even an option?!

I wonder if it is actually Windows 8 stopping this from happening and whether I should try a Windows 7 machine instead........?

[DinoF]

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@Anonymous wrote:

There is an awesome app called Copy My Data which makes copying contacts etc a piece of cake.

I know its available on Android but may be available in Windows too.....definitely worth a look.

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....looked into that already but that only works when you are copying from phone to phone and not from a laptop to a phone.

[Anonymous]

Hi @DinoF

I wasn't being funny about Google searches buddy , it's just an avenue I turn to when stuck 😄

Maybe it wouldn't take too long to key in that amount of contacts , but I understand its about finding an easier solution. 😄

[MI5]

It could possibly a win8 issue with driver signing.
Either try a win7 machine or connect the phone to the win8 machine with driver signing disabled.
http://www.howtogeek.com/167723/how-to-disable-driver-signature-verification-on-64-bit-windows-8.1-s...