Saturday, November 17, 2012

How do you move contacts from an old phone to an Android phone?

If you've had an Android phone before, then your contacts are all saved in Google, so just going through the set-up process with your new phone (see blog post Getting Started) will pull in your contacts.
However, if this is your first Android, then there are a couple different ways to avoid that hideous process of manually re-entering each number.

First, and most likely to work, on your old phone, export your contacts to your SD card. Open your contacts, then open the contacts menu, where you should find the option to export to SD card (you'll have to have an SD card installed in your phone at this point). Then take out the SD card and switch it to your new phone. Now open your contacts on the Android, touch menu, and import from SD card.

Second, sometimes you can't move your contacts to your SD card, but, if the phone is GSM (meaning uses a SIM card), you should still be able to move them onto your SIM card. Sometimes you'll have to move them to storage on the SIM card one entry at a time, but that's still a lot faster than manually entering the numbers. This, as when putting contacts on an SD card, will be in menu or settings, under contacts. Look for a way to move them all at once, but if you can't find that, then open one contact at a time, and then the menu button should reveal the option to switch it to SIM storage.

If your phone charges via micro USB, so you can plug it into your computer, then your last option is to plug it in, "Open device to view files," and see if you can locate a folder with contacts in it. If so, copy that folder onto your desktop. Then disconnect that phone, and plug your Android into your computer. See if you can locate a contacts folder there, and then copy the old contacts folder contents into the new contacts folder, on your Android.

If you try all of these and have no luck, comment to tell me what's going on. You can also let me know if you run into some confusion going through any of these steps. If there's a way to do it, I'll help you get it figured out!

No comments: