Mass edition of contacts

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hello all, I'm new to the club so forgive me if my question is a tad dumb.
Anyway, I recently installed the 2007 beta and decided to give the BCM a try.
I imported my BC database from various files I kept them in previously - and
from my mobile Nokia address book. And here's the question: Nokia
automatically calls all untagged phone numbers as "default", which are then
imported to BCM as "Other". It's not a great problem, but the result is the
phone number does not show in the default contact form and I have to copy the
"Other" phone to "Mobile" field manually, which is quite tiresome.

Is there a way to convert all "Other" phone numbers to, say, "Business"
numbers? Or even more, it would be nice if I could convert them on some basic
scheme, say: the number has 11 digits: move to "Mobile", if it has less -
move to "Business". Is there a chance to do that already?
 
There's no built-in mechanism to do that, but moving phone numbers from
the Other to Mobile or Business fields should be a fairly same database
operation. There's one table with all the phone numbers and a column
for each type of phone number.

It can be done directly with a single Sql UPDATE command, or a Visual
Basic for-each item in a folder loop. Know anyone that programs and
owes you a favor?
 
Sadly no. There indeed is a fairly simple and easy to use table format
showing all the phone numbers. However, what I found a natural solution
(clicking and dragging entries between the fields) does not seem to work.
Also, there is apparently no option to export the database to some external
data editor (even Excel could do) and do all the changes there... or am I
mistaken?
Cheers
 
If you are comfortable making the change in Excel, you could export
your Contacts to CSV format, load the CSV file into Excel, and make the
changes.

Even easier, would be to export to CSV, delete the Contacts in BCM (so
you don't end up with dups), import the CSV file, and during the import
map the Other Telephone field in the CSV to the BCM Business Telephone
field, and map the rest of the fields to their original fields.

Or export to a BCM file (for better fidelity), load the BCM file into a
text editor (like notepad) and replace OtherPhoneNum tags with
WorkPhoneNum tags, delete the contacts in BCM to avoid dups, and import
the file back in.
 
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