A year ago, I posted a step-by-step solution to sync contact data from the Palm Treo to the Blackberry Curve. It should also work well from the Palm Treo 650, 700, 755 and new Centro to a Blackberry Pearl, Curve and other varieties of RIM cell phones.

Since then, that article became and has remained the most frequently read post on my blog. What amazes me is how so many people are trying to transfer their Palm smartphone contact info to or from a Blackberry and unable to get help from the manufacturers and wireless carriers after hours on the phone. The worst “solution” I’ve heard was from an anonymous commenter who said, “[I] just spent 2 hrs with T-mobile/BBerry support. They gave up and told me to transfer contact[s] manually.” Ouch!

Have a look through the original comments about syncing these smartphones. Some are quite entertaining.

The comments have also surfaced other related problems that needed solving. I’ll reprint some of them here since the comment history is getting rather long. But feel free to check out the original list for other goodies.

Transferring data from Blackberry to Palm
Some visitors wanted to actually go the other way, converting their Blackberry info to a new Palm Treo (or perhaps a Palm Centro). That’s pretty easy to do as well:

1. Sync your Blackberry with Outlook.
2. Export the data to a CSV file (e.g. Contacts.csv).
3. Using the Palm Desktop software, import the CSV file from step #2 into the Palm Contacts database.
4. If all the contacts look good after step #3 (make any correction in Palm Desktop), then HotSync the Treo.

Transferring data from Blackberry to Palm without Outlook

1. Sync the Blackberry.
2. Open the Blackberry Desktop Manager.
3. Go to Intellisync.
4. Click on Configure PIM.
5. Select the Address book item.
6. Click on Choose and select ASCII Import/Export as the type of address book.
7. Select Export under Operation.
8. In the file name field, enter Contacts.csv
9. Click the OK button, then click on Synchronize Now.
10. When the sync is complete, import the file into Contacts in Palm Desktop
11. Sync the Palm Treo/Centro, etc.

Syncing from Palm to Blackberry without Outlook

The least expensive shareware/commercial tool to convert from Palm DBA format to CSV is datebookCSV. I haven’t tried it but it looks like it’ll do the job. If you use this tool, post a comment with your experience.

Well, that’s it for now. If you have more tips for Palm or Blackberry users, be sure to post it here.

A friend called me up tonight because he had run into an insurmountable obstacle. He wanted to transfer the contacts from his Treo 680 to his new Blackberry Curve. Simple, right? It comes with software to do that. Well, even after spending hours and hours with AT&T and RIM support, he was left without a successful migration. Even the software tool that’s supposed to transfer the data directly from a Palm Treo to the Blackberry Curve failed to work–it didn’t allow him to select the Treo device as the data source even though it was plugged into the PC. If you’re in this situation as well, here’s how we got the job done.

Note: Since I don’t own these devices, this is written from memory (very recent memory; half an hour ago). Thus, the actual names of some things such as menu items may be slightly different but that won’t prevent you from carrying out the steps.

Before you begin (things you’ll need):

1. Palm Desktop (the software that came with the Palm Treo)
2. Blackberry Desktop (the software that came with the RIM Blackberry)
3. Microsoft Outlook 2000 or newer (even if you don’t normally use it, you’ll need it to act as a translator and synchronization source for the address book data)
4. Blackberry device and sync cable

Exporting/importing the data:

1. Start Palm Desktop. (The latest version as of this writing is 4.2 although Palm’s own web site only has the older version 4.1.4 available. [Update: apparently 4.2 has compatibility problems so Palm reverted to an earlier version on their site.])
2. Create a new entry and in every field, put the name of the field as the value for the field (e.g. in the Last Name field, enter Last Name; in the First Name field, enter First Name). This will make it easier to do the data mapping later.
3. Go to the address book and select all the entries you want to export (choose Select All from the Edit menu to choose everything). Failure to select entries will result in only the first one being exported.
4. Choose Export from the File menu.
5. Choose the file type as CSV (comma-separated value).
6. Enter the name for the file (e.g. Contacts.csv) and remember where you’re saving it.
7. Start Microsoft Outlook.
8. Open your Contacts.
9. Select Import from the File menu.
10. For the file type, select Windows CSV or DOS CSV (the name may be different in your version of Outlook).
11. Select the file you exported in step 6.
12. If Outlook doesn’t automatically map the fields in the CSV file, you’ll have to map them manually. The easiest way to do this is to go to the address of the person named Last Name (remember that you entered this in step 2?) so that you can easily see which field is which in the CSV file. Then assign them to the appropriate field name in Outlook (the method to do this may vary with different versions of Outlook).
13. Click the Finish button to import all the addresses.
14. Go to the Blackberry Desktop and open the synchronization utility.
15. On the configuration tab, make sure that the Address Book is associated with Microsoft Outlook (there will be a double-headed arrow between the two).
16. Plug the Blackberry into your PC with the synchronization cable.
17. Watch all the messages go by as the data is synchronized.
18. When the sync is done, disconnect the Blackberry and check that everything appears in the Blackberry’s address book. If it doesn’t, reboot the Blackberry (not sure why this is necessary but my friend’s Blackberry wouldn’t show the new data until he took the battery out and put it back in).

That should do it. If you don’t have Outlook, then Outlook Express may also work. I believe I saw it as an option in the Blackberry synchronization software’s configuration options.