Section 26. Import Your Address Book

26. Import Your Address Book

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

24 Create a BlackBerry Web Client Account

SEE ALSO

25 Configure Web Client Options

31 Add Another Email Account to the Web Client

26. Import Your Address Book

The cornerstone of any useful email application is the list of contacts to which you can send email messages. Although you can certainly enter an email address the slow way, it's much more efficient to simply enter it once for a particular contact and then reference that contact to send email messages. Of course, this approach requires you to enter the email addresses of all your contacts, which I suspect is a chore you've already carried out in your current email client software. Knowing this, an even more efficient approach to getting your current contact list into your BlackBerry device involves importing your existing contacts into the BlackBerry Web Client Address Book, which instantly gives you access to your full contact list without having to reenter any information.

The Web Client Address Book provides a feature for importing contacts from an email or PIM client provided that you export it from the client application in the appropriate format (CSV). Assuming that your client application supports the CSV format, you can export and then import contacts into the BlackBerry Web Client with very little effort. Microsoft Outlook provides export functionality that works great for this task, but even if you use a different client application, you might find that it is equally capable of exporting the contacts in the CSV format.

KEY TERMS

PIM client Stands for personal information management client, an application used to access and manage personal information such as contacts, appointments, and tasks .

CSV Stands for Comma Separated Values, a file format in which text data is listed in order and separated by commas. Many popular productivity applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Excel allow you to import and export data in CSV format.

1.	Log In to the BlackBerry Web Client Site on Your PC If you aren't already logged in to the BlackBerry Web Client, navigate to the BlackBerry Web Client site using your desktop web browser. Enter your user ID and password in the appropriate fields, and click the Login button to log in.
2.	Navigate to the Address Book Page Click the Address Book icon on the left side of the BlackBerry Web Client page to open the Address Book page, which displays the BlackBerry Web Client online Address Book.
3.	Navigate to the Address Book Import Page Click the Import icon on the top BlackBerry Web Client menu to open the Address Book Import page, which provides access to the Address Book's import feature. This feature allows you to import contact data in the CSV format.
4.	Export Your Contacts from Your PIM Client Before you can import data into the BlackBerry Web Client Address Book, you must first export it using PIM client software that supports the CSV format, such as Microsoft Outlook. In Microsoft Outlook, you export contacts by selecting File, Import and Export . The Import and Export Wizard appears, which allows you to export Address Book contacts in the CSV format. TIP If you don't use Microsoft Outlook as your email client, check to see whether your email client supports exporting its address book as a CSV file. If not, you won't be able to import your existing address book into the BlackBerry Web Client. Select Export to a file as the action to perform in the Import and Export Wizard ; then click the Next button. Then select Comma Separated Values (Windows) as the type of file to be created, and click Next again. Then select Contacts as the only folder to export, and click Next again. And finally, enter the name and location of the file to contain the exported CSV data, and click Next once more. Click the Finish button on the final page of the wizard to export the data to the specified file. Now you're ready to import contacts from the newly created CSV file into the BlackBerry Web Client Address Book. So, turn your attention back to the Address Book Import page.
5.	Import Your Contacts into the Address Book The Address Book Import page prompts you to enter the name of the CSV file that contains your contact data to be imported. Click the Browse button and browse your PC to find the file you created in step 4. Then click the Add button to import the contacts from the file and add them to the Web Client Address Book.

NOTE

Unfortunately, the contacts in the BlackBerry Web Client Address Book are in no way synchronized with your PIM client or your BlackBerry device. So, if you want to update the contacts in the Web Client Address Book, you'll need to delete the contacts in the Web Client and reimport them from your PIM client; if you reimport without first deleting the existing contacts, you'll end up with duplicates.