Saturday, September 21, 2013

Transferring all contacts from BlackBerry to Android Galaxy Phone

Yesterday, I was attempting to switch over from my Blackberry, to a Samsung Galaxy S, and spent quite some time figuring out.

There are many links on the internet. Finally here is what I did:

1. Bluetooth Option: I tried pairing my galaxy with blackberry in bluetooth. The pairing was successful. Then in bluetooth menu of Blackberry itself, when you select a bluetooth device, you will find an option saying "Transfer Contacts". I did that, and BB said -- 400 Contacts Transferred, but the Galaxy only added the FIRST contact! So basically, this method did not work for me :(

2. Using BlackBerry Desktop Software (for Mac):

  • I chose to "Sync Contacts" with Computer. There it gave me a warning, that this is the first time you are syncing contacts what should it do. I chose "MERGE", since I didn't anyways have any contacts on my Mac. 
  • After this, when I typed "Address Book" in my SpotLight, I saw all my Contacts had been successfully imported into my Local Address Book of Mac.
  • In Address Book preferences, if you select "Local On My Mac", there was an option for syncing Address book with Google Account. I gave it credentials of a new Gmail account I have created solely for Contact syncing with my android. Once I did that, all my contacts were sent to GMAIL. Then I unchecked the Gmail sync option from AddressBook since I didn't want any more sync to happen. 
  • I registered that particular GMAIL account in my Android (in Settings -> Account), and chose to sync only the CONTACTS. 




That's it. The contacts are now in my phone.. and they will stay 2 way synch with my Android-only GMAIL account, which is kinda neat.

Bye Bye Blackberry. I will miss the tiny red blinking light of my Blackberry.