When it comes to your address book, the BlackBerry has a very in-depth and easy-to-use system. If you use Outlook, Google, or nearly any contacts storage service, you can easily sync it up with your BlackBerry.
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To begin with the basics, adding a new contact is very simple. Find and select the Contacts icon. Once in the contact list press the menu key and scroll up to New Contact. Once you have begin to create a new contact entry you will have the option to enter the person’s title, first and last name, a nickname, the company they work for and their position, home and work addresses, and much more useful information about that person. Once you are finished entering information press the menu key and select save. For a contact that already has information and you want to add to that existing information, highlight the contact and select edit.
One amazing feature on the BlackBerry is how contacts can easily be shared. If someone else already has a contact entry in their phone and they want to share that contact with you, they can highlight the contact that they wish to send, press the menu key, and select “Send As Attachment”. This attachment can be sent using MMS, PIN messages, or email. The default for sending them is by email. In order to send via MMS or PIN you will have to begin by composing the respective type of message. Once you have selected a recipient, press the menu key and select “Attach Contact”. When the contact is received it will appear as any other kind of attachment. Simply click on the attachment and it will allow you to view it. If you do not already have that contact in your address book, the menu will also allow you to add them to your address book. If the contact already exists you can update their information to match the attachment. After a contact is added, you can go to the address book, highlight the contact’s name and press the menu key. You will see options to send them any kind of message that their contact information allows.
The other type of contact you may want to add to your lists would be a new BlackBerry Messenger contact. This can be done with either a barcode that is assigned to your device PIN. To find your barcode simply open BlackBerry Messenger and scroll up to the status bar. Once you open up your profile page scroll down and there will be a button with “Display My Barcode” on it. Select that and the barcode with display. Pressing the menu key will give you the option to save your barcode for sharing. To add someone yourself, back out of this page to your BlackBerry Messenger contacts list, press the menu key and select “Invite Contact”. Further information on this type of contact can be found in my previous post, How-To: Messaging. Your BlackBerry Messenger contacts can also be linked to your contacts list in your address book. Highlight the contact you wish to link, press the menu key, and select “Link to BlackBerry Contact”. This will then bring up a prompt page for you to choose to add a new contact or link to an existing contact.
A great feature that RIM has implemented into their contacts list is Facebook integration. After you install the Facebook for BlackBerry application, the application itself will scan through all of your contacts and link them to your Facebook friends. This will automatically upload the linked contacts’ Facebook profile pictures into the contacts list. Once linked, you can send messages to your friends and write on their wall straight from the address book. There are also some other contact supplementary applications such as DubMeNow and some various business card scanners.
One thing I would suggest after getting all of your contacts on your phone is to back up your device. I can’t begin to tell you how many people have come to me completely devastated because they have somehow wiped their phone and lost all of their contacts because they didn’t create a backup.
BlackBerry offers one of the best system for contacts. Though it is a bit robust, it’s fairly simple to set up and learn. It may be bland and not the prettiest to look at, but it definitely has a lot to offer to both business users and regular consumers.
If anyone has any questions or concerns either leave a comment or contact me directly at taylor@bberrydog.com.
